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ALEXANDER THE GREAT 



HEROES OF ALL TIME 



FIRST VOLUMES 



Alexander the Great. By Ada Rxjssell, M.A. 
(Vict.) 

Augustus. By Ren^ Francis, B.A. 

Alfred the Great. By A. E. McKilliam, M.A. 

Jeanne d'Arc. By E. M. Wilmot-Buxton, 
F.R.Hist.S. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. By Beatrice Marshall. 

William the Silent. By A. M. Miall. 



Other volumes in active preparation 




'ALEXANDER AND DIOGENES' 



ALEXANDER 
THE GREAT 

BY 

ADA RUSSELL, M.A. (Vict.) 



With Frontispiece in Color and Eight 
Black-and-White Illustrations 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1914, h 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 

All Rights Reserved 



August, 1914. 



SEP iim 



©aA380350 



Contents 



C KAPTEB PAGE 

I, The Old World 9 

II. Philip II of Macedonia 25 

III. Alexander as Prince 37 

IV. Alexander in Thrace, Illyria, and Greece ... 49 
V. The Conquest of Asia Minor 60 

VI. Conquest of Syria and Phcbnicia 76 

VII. Alexander in Egypt 88 

VIII. The Conquest of Persia 96 

IX. Alexander in Central Asia Ill 

X. The Conquest of the Punjab 125 

XI. The Return to Susa 138 

XII. The Last Two Years 152 

XIII. Alexander's Character and Place in History . . 172 

XIV. The Alexandrian Empire 179 



Illustrations 

Alexander and Diogenes Frontispiece '^ 

PAGE 

Alexander coercing the Delphic Oracle 52 " 

Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot 72 ^"^ 

The Fight about the Chariot op Darius at Issus . . 78 "^ ' 

The Siege of Gaza 86 

The Death of Darius 108 

The Murder of Clitus 122 

The Phalanx attacking the Centre on the Htdaspes . 132 

The Death of Alexander 168 - 

MAP 

To Show Empire of Alexander the Great 190 



CHAPTER I: The Old World 

IT is difficult to realize that the earth on which 
Alexander the Great was born was the same in 
its main outlines as the earth on which we 
stand to-day, and at the same time to realize how 
very different from our present knowledge were 
men's ideas then of its area. Even modern writers 
picture Alexander as primitive in his notions, and 
it will be interesting to remember, when we find 
him anxious to press ever farther and farther east 
and south, that the philosophers of his time, espe- 
cially his great teacher Aristotle, had just announced 
new arguments to prove that the earth was spherical 
in form. The old Homeric ideas that the earth was 
a flat disk, that the bronze firmament, set with stars, 
was upheld on great pillars by Atlas, and that the 
sun (as Herodotus imagined) could be blown out of its 
course by a strong wind, had passed away for ever. 

Among the earliest peoples to travel about the 
sea were the Phoenicians, a Semitic race akin to the 
Jews, and the greatest trading and maritime race 
of antiquity. They ventured far in search of the 
rich merchandise which they brought back to their 
cities of Tyre and Sidon on the coast of Syria, to 
Carthage on the north coast of Africa, and to their 
other settlements at all quarters of the Mediterranean. 
They are believed to have learned the alphabet and 
other arts from their customers the Egyptians, and 
to have been the teachers of the Greeks in these 
matters. The Phoenicians told nobody of the geo- 
graphical knowledge which they acquired in their 
wanderings, as they were anxious to keep a trading 
9 



Alexander the Great 

monopoly. They rounded the coast of Spain by 
the 'Pillars of Hercules' at a very early date, 
sailed through the Bay of Biscay, established trade 
with Britain, and perhaps even fetched amber 
from the shores of the Baltic. When the Greeks, 
however, first began to launch their merchantmen 
the Phoenicians assured them that the Pillars of 
Hercules stood at the western end of the earth, and 
probably many of the legends which make early 
Greek geography so picturesque were invented by 
those wily adventurers in order to discourage the 
Greeks from following in their steps. Thus the 
Greeks of the early fifth century B.C. believed that 
the Arabian frankincense brought by the Phoenicians 
was guarded by dragons, and that screeching, winged 
animals sought to peck out the eyes of the Arabians 
who, clad in stout armour, gathered cassia by the 
shores of a remote lake. Cinnamon was supposed to 
be got by artful devices from the nests of birds on an 
unscaleable precipice; and gold, the story ran, was 
stolen by the one-eyed Arimaspi from the griffins. 
The Persians, who dazzled Greek eyes with their 
quantities of gold, told the Greeks that it was obtained 
by Indians at the peril of their lives; they were 
pursued, as they gathered the gold-dust, by ants 
somewhat smaller than dogs but bigger than foxes 
and swifter than any other animal on earth. Many of 
these legends had become discredited by Alexander's 
time, but it was owing to his travels that they 
passed for ever out of the realm of geography into 
that of myth, as far as the ancients were concerned. 
The Greeks, unlike the Phoenicians, took a Platonic 
interest in geography, and before they had many 



The Old World 

facts to go upon commenced to make maps of the 
world. More than that, they began to have ideas 
about the universe. Anaximander, who made the 
first map early in the sixth century B.C., declared 
his belief that the earth swung in the sky hke the 
planets. He does not seem to have taught that it 
was spherical in shape, but later on in that century 
Pythagoras made as great a stir as did Copernicus 
more than two thousand years later, by declaring 
that the earth revolved round some great central 
fire in the heavens, and that it was itself a globe. 
These were only good guesses, and very few people 
could accept the curious, mystical reasons which 
Pythagoras gave for his opinions; but the philoso- 
phers of the fourth century approved of the theory 
of sphericity and found good reasons for it. Aristotle, 
who possessed one of the most scientific brains ever 
given to a mortal, said that the phenomenon of 
gravitation would make the earth spherical, and 
pointed to the fact that the shadow cast by the 
earth on the moon in an eclipse was invariably 
circular in shape. Alexander, who had more than 
the normal Greek geographical curiosity, cannot have 
failed to know Aristotle's views. 

Before Alexander lived the Greeks considered 
Delphi, where the shrine of Apollo stood, as the 
centre of the earth's surface. Two eagles, the story 
ran, released by Zeus at the edges of the eastern and 
western oceans, had flown until they met at Delphi, 
where a stone, still in the museum there, was known 
as the 'navel of the earth.' The Greeks originally 
divided the earth into the two continents of Asia 
(including Africa), the land of the sunrise, and 



Alexander the Great 

Europe, the land of night, but by the fifth century 
B.C. they had come to recognize the third continent 
of Africa, which they named Libya. America and 
Austraha were not to emerge until two millenniums 
had passed over; the Red Indians enjoyed their 
hunting-grounds as yet undisturbed by any white 
man, and even the Phoenician traders had caught 
up no story of the Australian aborigines. In the 
three continents which composed the Old World no 
one in Alexander's time had any idea of the vast 
expanse of Africa or of the southern extension of 
India. The existence of China was unsuspected, 
while the Pillars of Hercules remained the western 
boundary of the world at the conqueror's death. 
About a year after Alexander passed away, Pytheas, 
a Greek, sailed between the Pillars and cruised along 
the coast of France to Britain. He was probably the 
first of his countrymen to adventure so far. 

The Greek knowledge of Europe was almost con- 
fined to the small portion of it inhabited by them- 
selves, that was, the most easterly of the three 
peninsulas of the Mediterranean — Greece — colonies 
on the shores of Thrace and the Hellespont, numerous 
cities planted on the heel and toe of Italy and in 
Sicily, and one or two colonies on the coasts of Gaul 
and Spain Of inland Spain they knew nothing. 
At the time of Alexander's accession the Greek cities 
of South Italy were engaged in a life-and-death 
struggle with Italian tribes, among whom the Romans 
were not yet predominant. If Alexander had lived 
longer he might have further changed the course of 
the world's history by conquering Italy, but as it 
was he never went near Italy, which is thus out of 

12 



The Old World 

our story. His only connexion with Rome was to 
prepare her path by his own work. North of the 
three peninsulas Httle was known to any one except, 
perhaps, the Phoenicians. In this district our own 
Germanic and Celtic ancestors were living, far away 
from the central stage of history. The Germanic 
peoples were settled on the north-west shores of the 
Baltic, and separated from Mediterranean civiliza- 
tion by widespread Celtic tribes. At the commence- 
ment of Alexander's reign the Celtic people inhabited 
North Italy, Spain, France, Britain, and the Nether- 
lands as far as the Weser, as far east as the lower 
Danube, and almost as far south at that point as 
the borders of Macedonia. These people, of huge 
stature and proverbial for their pride, were well 
known to the Greeks; in 390 B.C. they had made 
their famous sack of Rome, and after Alexander's 
death they nearly broke down the power of Mace- 
donia. Alexander's relations with them only amount- 
ed to a military demonstration on his part, and their 
subjugation was reserved for the Romans. 

The continent of Africa recognized by the Greeks 
did not include Egypt, which they considered to be 
in Asia, as it was a member of the Persian Empire. 
Egypt was to be conquered by Alexander, and through 
his con(juest many events fateful for modern civiliza- 
tion were to happen. West of Egypt lay the im- 
portant Greek colony of Cyrene, and, farther west, 
Carthage, the rival of the Greeks now, as she was 
to be in future times of the Romans. South of these 
states there were strange races called by the Africans 
— what they probably were — gorillas; and, according 
to Greek tales, there were still wilder men and women, 
13 



Alexander the Great 

with eyes in their shaggy breasts, and with dogs 
heads or no heads at all. 

In the continent of Asia all but a year of Alexander's 
reign was spent, and the scene of our story will lie 
there almost entirely. His invasion of the Persian 
Empire is a chapter in the old struggle between West 
and East, commenced when the Greek Agamemnon 
besieged Troy and continued when the Persian 
monarchs, Darius and Xerxes, invaded Greece in 
the days of Marathon and Salamis. Two centuries 
before Alexander's birth Persia had risen to be the 
chief power in the Old World, and its sovereign 
assumed the title of King of Kings or Lord of the Four 
Quarters of the Earth. To-day we should call this 
ruler over many peoples an emperor, but *emperor' 
was one of the words invented by the Romans and 
not used in its present sense before the establishment 
of the Roman Empire; in modern histories, therefore, 
these ancient rulers of the Persian Empire are often 
styled for convenience *the Great King.' Before 
turning our attention to Macedonia and Alexander 
we will now look briefly at the history of the forma- 
tion of the Persian Empire and its connexion with 
Greece before the rise of Macedonia. 

Three great empires had risen and passed in 
Western Asia before the birth of Alexander — those 
of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Medes. Assyria 
(with its capital at Nineveh, in ruins in Alexander's 
time) and Babylonia (with its capital, Babylon, still 
one of the finest cities in the world) formed the 
district of Mesopotamia, between the rivers Tigris 
and Euphrates; its civilization was perhaps as old 
as that of Egypt and far older than that of Greece. 
14 



The Old World 



The Medes establislied their supremacy over this 
district in the seventh century B.C., and came into 
bitter conflict with the Greeks of Asia Minor and 
the iEgean islands, but it was reserved for the 
Persians, the successors of the Medes, to attack 
Greece proper. Before, however, the Persians could 
expand westward into Greek lands they had to 
overrun the strong state of Lydia, concerning which 
such charming stories have been handed down to us 
by the Greeks. 

Besides their western colonies the Greeks had 
planted cities on the coast of Asia Minor before the 
memory of man. Three successive strips of coast, 
iEolis, Ionia, and Doris, going from north to south, 
represented the iEolian, Ionian and Dorian tribes 
of Greece. Adjoining, there stretched from north 
to south the non-Greek districts of Phrygia, Mysia, 
Lydia, Caria, and Lycia. The Lydians extended 
their supremacy over Greek cities westward and 
northward, and over Assyrian provinces eastward, 
until at last their boundary was established at the 
river Halys, which runs northward into the Black 
Sea. At their capital, Sardis, the great road from 
Mesopotamia terminated. For a long time Lydia 
formed a barrier between the restless Medes and 
Greece, but in the middle of the sixth century its 
power was destroyed by the Persian Cyrus, who 
rebelled against Media and established a Medo- 
Persian empire. His subjects were largely Medes, 
and generally called Medes by the Greeks. 

The last Lydian king was Croesus, whose wealth, 
famed then, has now become proverbial. 

Croesus sought in vain to oppose the westward 
IS 



Alexander the Great 

advance of Cyrus, and was at last (in 546 B.C.) driven 
into his capital, which was besieged and taken by 
the Persian conqueror. 

After the subjugation of Lydia the Persians 
occupied the Greek coast towns and the Greek 
islands off the coast of Asia Minor. Mighty Babylon 
fell in 538 B.C.; ancient Egypt became a Persian 
satrapy in 5^5 B.C.; and the Perso-Median Empire 
extended from the Nile to Afghanistan. Darius I, 
a ruler only to be compared with Alexander, divided 
his vast dominions into provinces (satrapies), and 
established the capital at Susa, about 150 miles 
from the Persian Gulf. The Royal Road from 
Sardis, the head of the new Persian satrapy of Lydia 
and Ionia, was extended to Susa; it was 1,500 miles 
long and made swift communication possible between 
West and East. Along the line of this road the 
first postal service was established. Men and horses 
were kept in readiness at stations of a day's journey 
from each other, and the rider from the first station 
delivered his letter to a rider at the second, who rode 
off to the third, and so on along the whole route. 
Nothing mortal, the Greeks said, travelled so fast as 
these Persian messengers, who were hindered neither 
by snow, rain, heat, nor the darkness of night. Natur- 
ally inns grew up at the stations, and other travellers 
besides postmen and adventurous merchants began to 
pass about from country to country. 

Darius crossed into Europe in about 512 B.C., 
subdued Thrace, and, like Alexander after him, 
made a military demonstration across the Danube. 
The next step was to conquer Greece, for the Greeks 
were encouraging their kinsmen in Asia Minor to 
i6 



The Old World 

revolt against Persia. A rising in Ionia took place in 
499, and Athens aided in burning Sardis. For the 
first time the Great King heard of the existence of the 
Athenians, and, it is said, he bade his attendants say- 
to him thrice daily when his dinner was spread, 
"Master, remember the Athenians!" For he meant 
to punish them heavily when he should have time. 

The Ionian rebellion practically came to an end 
in 494, when Miletus submitted; its male inhabitants 
were put to the sword, while the women and children 
were sent as slaves to Susa. Nothing remained but 
to punish Eretria and Athens for aiding the rebels, 
and Darius declaring himself overlord of Greece, sent 
to her chief cities to demand earth and water ^ as 
a sign of subjection. At Sparta his envoys were 
thrown into a well; at Athens they were hurled into 
the Pit of Punishment, wherein iron hooks tore the 
bodies of falling malefactors; and in 490 B.C., there- 
fore, the Persians sailed for Greece, bringing with 
them the tyrant Hippias, whom the Athenians had ex- 
pelled from their city. Burning Eretria, they landed 
their large army on the plain of Marathon, where 
by the lowest estimate, 6,400 Medes fell, while the 
Athenians lost only 192 men. This defeat probably 
seemed of little consequence to the Persians, but it 
was of the greatest consequence in Greek history. 
It really only showed that the Greek soldier well led 
was more than a match for a number of Asiatics 
badly led, but it gave the Greeks a confidence which 
made them irresistible against the Persians. 

Darius died in 485, and was followed on the throne 
by Xerxes, under whom the greater^ invasion of 

^ The Asiatic symbols of submission. 
17 



Alexander the Great 

Greece took place. Unlike Darius, Xerxes de- 
termined to come over in person, and it was not 
until 480 that his enormous force was ready. In 
the summer of 481 he left Susa and came up to 
Lydia, staying with Pythius, the richest man in the 
world after himself. Before crossing the Helles- 
pont in 480 he took up his position on a white marble 
throne on a hill near Abydos to review his countless 
troops on the shore below. 

Draining rivers dry in its course,^ the army marched 
over Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly to the pass 
of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and his three hun- 
dred Spartan soldiers made their immortal resistance. 
From Thermopylae the Persians advanced south 
and burned Athens, deserted by its citizens, but 
the Athenians defeated the Persians in the great 
naval battle in the Bay of Salamis (480 B.C.), and 
Xerxes fled away to secure his bridge over the 
Hellespont. He left his general, Mardonius, to 
winter in Thessaly, but in the spring of 479 Mar- 
donius was defeated by the united Greek states at the 
decisive battle of Platsea. 

The olive-tree of Athena shot up afresh on the 
Acropolis at Athens, a new and finer array of temples 
soon took the place of those burned down, and over 
all Greece there dawned, as a result of the Persian 
wars, a more splendid day. 

The story of Greece until the Macedonian conquest 
was that of numerous city-states entirely independent 
of each other. A few of the larger cities had sub- 
jugated some of their neighbours, but this subjugation, 

^ Modern estimates of the numbers which might be led so far, 
spoil this old story. 

i8 



The Old World 

was fiercely resented, and the subject city was always 
ready to throw off the yoke, while the attempts 
of one or two leading states to establish small empires 
roused a clamour of indignation. We know to-day 
that the nation was bound to supersede the city-state, 
and we wish that the Greeks could have united in 
a voluntary federation, and so avoided the fate 
of passing under the yoke of an inferior civilization, 
but we see that there were the greatest difficulties 
in the path of such a movement. In this moun- 
tainous country nature kept the different towns apart; 
each was a separate family, and nothing would induce 
them to enter into a common life under one national 
roof. When joint action became necessary, as in 
the Persian wars, national leaders like Athens and 
Sparta emerged, but whenever one state won any 
superiority over the others it always abused its power. 
Athens and Sparta were 'yoke-fellows' in the 
leadership of Hellas during the Persian wars, Sparta 
being regarded as the military head of Greece, 
while Athens was its intellectual chief. Whether the 
ancient Spartans were a merely martial race remains 
the same problem to history as it was to their 
contemporaries. Their sternly trained youths were 
models of masculine beauty, and though they seldom 
spoke they sometimes came out, Plato tells us, with 
pithy sayings which made other people feel childish. 
But whether they were the deepest of philosophers 
or the simplest of fighting peoples, their wisdom was 
of no benefit to the other Greeks or to the after- 
world. They kept it so jealously to themselves 
that most people are uncharitable enough to think 
its existence an Athenian fiction; it was difficult 
19 



Alexander the Great 

enough for a stranger to find entry into Sparta at 
any time, and they carefully expelled strangers from 
their gates, so the Athenians said, before holding any 
intellectual assemblies. The Athenians, fortunately 
for the after- world, loved to communicate their ideas. 
After the second Persian war Athens became the 
first state in Greece, and so remained until the close 
of the fifth century B.C. The Parthenon (still 
lovely though spoiled by time, Turk, friend, and foe) 
rose on the Acropolis, ^schylus had fought at 
Marathon, and soon afterward the young Sophocles 
commenced to produce his tragedies. Euripides, 
born on the day of Salamis, lived to see the decline 
of his great city. Driven into exile by unworthy 
attacks, he came north to the court of Macedonia 
and there died. Peculiarly associated with Mace- 
donia, lines from Euripides spring to the lips of 
Alexander and his companions at the great moments 
of their lives, and in estimating Alexander's attitude 
toward the religion of his age it is well to remember 
that he must have been plentifully nourished on a 
poet who was a notorious heretic. In Macedonia 
Euripides wrote his BacchcB, which, according to an 
ingenious modern explanation of its meaning, was 
the boldest Euripidean atlack on the Olympic 
deities. The most remarkable personality of fifth- 
century Athens was one who left no written word 
behind him, but, on the contrary, informed all and 
sundry that he "knew nothing." To him, never- 
theless, far more justly than to Aristotle, might be 
given the title of 'Master of those that know.' 
This was Socrates, the teacher, although he dis- 
claimed such a title, of this great generation; through 



The Old World 

his chief companion, Plato, the wisdom of Socrates 
was handed down to Aristotle, Plato's cleverest 
pupil, and, as tutor of Alexander, an important 
character in our history. For a few years of his 
boyhood Alexander was in direct contact with the 
best thought of the world. Socrates, too, saw the 
beginning of the decline of his city and the day of 
its humiliation, and the Athenian people stained its 
annals by forcing him to drink the cup of hemlock in 
399 on the threefold charge of not worshipping the 
city gods, of introducing new gods (a most ignorant 
accusation), and of corrupting the youth of the city. 
Whenever in after-years men have described the ideal 
city-state destroyed by Macedonia they have been 
forced to make a more or less feeble apology for the 
murder of Socrates by the city government. 

The invasions by Persia had roused for the first 
time a national feeling in Greece, and Athens was 
able to form a federation which contained the germs 
of a nation; in the end, however, her yoke was 
found unbearable by her allies, and when they were 
able to do so they immediately threw it off. This 
federation was a union of states, mostly Ionian, 
formed in 478 B.C., with its headquarters at Delos, 
the sacred island where the twins Apollo and Artemis 
were born. Athens undertook to be treasurer, and 
very soon the Delian League became the Athenian 
Empire and the allies tributary vassals. It had been 
formed in the deepest national enthusiasm for the 
defence of Greece against Persia and the liberation 
of Asia Minor; and the voluntary activity of Athens 
had created a real loyalty toward that public-spirited 
state in all Ionian communities. Her statesman 



Alexander the Great 

Pericles, could truly say in his famous speech: 
"Athens is the school of Hellas and ... we have 
compelled every land and every sea to open a path 
for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal 
memorials of our friendship and of our enmity." 
Now the splendid 'tyrant city,' on the magnificent 
buildings of which there was suspiciously much 
money to spare, excited the jealousy and anger of 
her allies, who could with difficulty pay the tribute; 
and Sparta, quite put into the shade by Athens, 
was still more wroth. In 431 B.C., therefore, the 
fatal Peloponnesian War broke out, and by its close, 
in 404 B.C., Athens had been stripped of her empire, 
and Sparta was more important than ever in Greece. 
Worse than this, national feeling had been injured 
by Athens' failure. The Greek states would rather, 
now, give earth and water to the Great King than 
acquiesce in the rule of one of their own number. 
Moreover, the Athenian example had roused an 
imperial hunger; it was considered wicked to 
subjugate another Greek state, and yet each had 
seen the advantage of doing so. From her League 
there had rolled into Athens a great current of trade, 
and her rivals had begun to meditate on how to 
obtain wealth by the same means. 

In 404 B.C. the Long Walls of Athens, built during 
this century from the city to the sea, were pulled 
down to the sound of flutes amid the wild rejoicing 
of her enemies, and for a short time a Spartan gar- 
rison occupied the Athenian Acropolis; but Athens 
revived in the most marvellous fashion, and was able 
to re-enter the lists in the fourth century B.C. The 
fourth century was occupied until the Macedonian 



The Old World 

conquest by tlie struggles of the various states for 
supremacy. 

Sparta, convalescent Athens, Thebes, and a Thes- 
salian tyrant took it in turns to sway Greece, and 
the fall of each of them was brought about by a 
famous battle. Sparta was pre-eminent from 404 
to 371, and was not content to be the figure-head 
as in old days, but proved a greater tyrant to her 
allies and subjects than Athens had ever been. She 
had obtained the aid of Persia in reducing Athens, 
and allowed the Persians to take back the Greek 
cities of Asia Minor as a reward, but now began to 
pose as the national champion against Persia. Her 
warlike king Agesilaus formed plans hke those 
afterward carried out by Alexander the Great. He 
invaded Asia Minor and won several victories over 
the Persians, but the Spartan fleet was defeated, and 
Persia, alienated from Sparta, assisted Athens in 
her wonderful recovery, helping her to rebuild her 
Long Walls and refortify her port. At the earliest 
possible moment Athens eagerly discarded the 
Persian alliance, but by the Peace of Antalcidas 
(387 B.C.) the Greeks were forced to abandon their 
kinsmen in Asia Minor to the tender mercies of Per- 
sia. Scarcely a hundred years had gone by since Mara- 
thon, and yet there was little feeling against this 
westward retm'n of Persia. Far less outcry was made 
than when Greek cities were forced to accept the over- 
lordship of the Greek sovereigns of Macedonia. 

Sparta fell in 371 B.C., when her tyrannous attack 

on Thebes was defeated at Leuctra. Her place was 

taken by Thebes, an old-fashioned country town 

whose provincial citizens, proverbially stupid, were 

23 



Alexander the Great 

little expected to make any noise in the world, al- 
though Thebes in old times had furnished not only- 
heroes but gods to Greece. The commander of the 
Thebans at Leuctra was the great general Epaminon- 
das, who had evolved a new method of fighting. 
Like the Spartan hoplites, his soldiers carried pikes, 
but instead of using shallow lines of regular depth 
Epaminondas formed at one part a wedge of men 
standing so close together that their shoulders 
touched and their pikes projected past the men in 
front of them. This phalanx or column charged 
against the Spartans, who were drawn up in the usual 
columns, widespread and of little depth, and broke 
their lines by sheer impact. The Spartans were at 
once thrown into disorder, the rest of the Theban 
columns joined in, and a scene of carnage followed. 
Philip and Alexander of Macedon afterward made 
use of this new 'wedge' in their battles. 

Not only at Leuctra did the Thebans perform the 
unheard-of action of defeating a Spartan army 
fighting under its king, but they proceeded to 
invade the Peloponnesus, and harried the lands 
of Sparta up to the precincts of the city itself. It 
was in 367 B.C. that Thebes, Athens, and other 
Greek states appealed to the Great King to settle 
their disputes. Theban supremacy was bitterly 
contested, but remained a fact until the death of 
Epaminondas, who was slain while winning a great 
victory at Mantinea in 362 B.C. Thebes' power fell 
with her hero, but neither Athens nor Sparta was to 
profit by it. For long Greece refused to recognize 
the fact, but the Macedonian conquest had already 
begun. 

24 



CHAPTER II: Philip II of 
Macedonia 

MACEDONIA, over which Turk, Greek, 
Bulgarian, and Servian have quarrelled 
so bitterly to-day, became for the first 
time a united monarchy under Philip II, the father 
of Alexander the Great. It lay north of Thessaly, 
from which it was divided by the lofty Cambunian 
range of hills, snow-capped Olympus, the home of 
the Greek gods, towering over its southern border. 
On the west the mountains of Scardus and Pindus 
separated it from Illyria and all communication 
with tiie Adriatic, except for the narrow valley of 
the Eordaicus and a few mountain passes. In the 
east the boundary between Macedonia and Thrace 
was, until Philip's reign, the river Axius (the Vardar) 
which flowed south-eastward to the Gulf of Therme. 
Round this gulf stretched the fertile province of 
Emathia. the nucleus of the Macedonian sovereignty. 
Among ils hills stood the oldest capital, ^gse,' and, 
lower dovn, in a dreary position over the marshes, 
the new capital, Pella, where to-day scarcely a stone 
remains ol the city from which Alexander the Great 
set forth tc conquer the world. Alexander's successor, 
Cassander, removed the capital to the coast, and at 
Therme spiang up the new town of Thessalonica, 
now the di:ty and picturesque babel of Salonica, 
of the utmcst importance as a railway terminus. 
Eastward laj the three-pronged peninsula of Chalci- 
dice, for whidi Philip fought so bitterly with Athens, 
and, farther east, Greek colonies were scattered 
along the coast as far as and beyond Byzantium, 
25 



Alexander the Great 

destined in Christian times, under the name of 
Constantinople, to become the capital of a new Greek 
empire, and afterward the headquarters of the 
Turk. 

The Greeks of Alexander's day were as anxious 
to prove that Macedonia was not a Greek country 
as the Greeks of to-day are anxious to prove that 
it is a Greek country. The truth seems to have 
been that in these northern mountains a conquering 
Greek stock had united with the native Illyrians 
and Thracians. The Macedonians spoke a Greek 
dialect and retained Greek traits, but, cut off as 
they were from communication with their southern 
kinsfolk, they had come to seem a barbarous people 
to the cultured Greeks of the south. These latter, 
however, seldom questioned that the Macedonian 
kings were of Greek descent, and a legecd existed 
that Perdiccas, a scion of the royal house of Argos 
(itself descended from Heracles), had fled with 
his brethern into northern Greece, and after living 
for long as a cowherd had gradually conquered all 
Macedonia. 

The first historical king of Macedonia is Amyntas 
(c. 540-498 B.C.), who was compelled to submit to 
Darius the Great. His son, Alexander 1 (498-454 
B.C.), extended his domains, but was foTced, though 
extremely unwilling, to aid Xerxes as ais vassal in 
his invasion of Greece. His right to tate part in the 
Olympic Games was called in question, but the 
Greek descent of his line was recogrized, and he 
strove and obtained the garland. His son, Per- 
diccas n (448-413 B.C.), aided in tie destruction 
of the Athenian Empire; his successor, Archelaus, 

26 



Philip II of Macedonia 

raised himself to the throne by many crimes, but he 
was an able ruler and the patron of Greek art and 
a friend of Euripides. He came down from iEgae 
to Pella and established a brilliant court there. 
Thus the flame of civilization was kindled in this land 
of the wild beast and the huntsman and warring 
highland tribes. The names of the successors of 
Archelaus are as much a matter of dispute as the 
amount of truth in the lurid stories handed down of 
the crimes they committed, but Macedonia was com- 
paratively tranquil at the accession of Alexander II 
in 370 B.C. He was called in by the Thessalian 
cities in 369 B.C. to aid them against the tyrant of 
Pherse, and proved difficult to get rid of when he 
had performed his task, but was subdued by the 
Thebans. He was murdered by the Macedonian 
Ptolemy, who became regent for the heir, Perdiccas 
III, and made a treaty with Thebes in 367 B.C., 
sending Philip, younger brother of Perdiccas, to 
Thebes as a hostage. There Philip remained, learn- 
ing all he could in that great school for soldiers, 
until 364 B.C., when he returned to Macedonia. On 
the death of Perdiccas in 359 B.C. he became guardian 
of his brother's son and heir, Amyntas, but soon, at 
the request of the nobles, assumed the kingship as 
Philip II. 

At the time when his brother Perdiccas fell, 
fighting against the hill-tribes, Philip II was twenty- 
four years of age. His part in the world hitherto had 
been chiefly that of observer, and, we may guess, 
of roisterer, but he at once displayed the very highest 
practical ability, and brought an iron will to the 
carrying out of schemes as vast as those of his greater 
27 



Alexander the Great 

son. Pliilip loved more to make merry than Alex- 
ander ever did, but Demosthenes, no friend of his, 
was right when he told the pleasure-loving Athenians 
the secret of his success. "Philip," he said, "for the 
sake of empire and absolute power, had his eye 
knocked out, his collar-bone broken, his hand and 
his leg maimed, and was ready to resign any part 
of his body that Fortune chose to take from him, 
provided that with what remained he might live 
in honour and glory." He was more cynical than 
Alexander, or at least more outspoken about it, 
for he was accustomed to say that he could take 
any fortress into which an ass laden with gold 
could climb, and he did more by 'diplomacy* of 
this and other sorts than by war. This portrait, 
drawn of him by an historian of a few centuries 
later, is not an unfair one: "His chief wealth was 
his army. He was more skilled in obtaining riches 
than in keeping them; so, though constantly engaged 
in rapine, he was ever poor. He was equally mild 
and faithless. To him no way of conquering was 
base. He was both persuasive and deceptive in 
speech, and would promise more than he would stand 
by; a master of both wisdom and fooling. He 
cherished friendships according to their profitableness, 
not as a matter of honour. He would constantly 
pretend liking for an enemy and simulate vexation 
against those dear to him. It was his practice to stir 
up discord among allies and to try to keep in 
favour with both parties. Add to these traits a 
distinguished eloquence, pith and experience as a 
speaker, with neither ease lacking to ornament nor 
ornament to invention." This well-qualified prince 



Philip II of Macedonia 

now came to the head of affairs in Macedonia, and 
at once, as if by magic, the pretenders to the throne 
disappeared and the hill-tribes were broken, the 
troublesome Pseonian and Illyrian vassals of Mace- 
donia being quelled at last with great slaughter by 
the man who had learned how to fight from Epami- 
nondas. Philip, however, modified the idea which 
he had learned from Epaminondas; both he and 
Alexander were accustomed to concentrate their 
strength at one point of the line in the Theban fashion 
in order to throw the enemy's ranks into confusion, 
but they did this with a wedge of cavalry, not of 
infantry, and with their archers and slingers. The 
Macedonian phalanx of infantry became dreaded 
chiefly from the use which its leaders taught it to 
make of pikes considerably longer than those of the 
Greeks. Epaminondas had introduced the long pike, 
but Philip and Alexander used still longer ones. 
The ordinary Spartan pike was twelve feet in length; 
the Macedonian sarissa was fourteen or sixteen feet 
in length in illexander's time, and seems afterward 
to have been increased to the absurd extent of 
twenty-four feet. This appears to have been the 
military hierarchy as Philip left it: All Macedonians 
were the King's Companions, the cavalry being 
known simply as Companions (ffetorz), the infantry, 
their inferiors in social rank, as the Foot-Com- 
panions (Pesetceri), a picked force in both forming 
the Agema of each. The most famous infantry 
corps was that of the Guards (Hypaspistce), about 
3,000 in number and including the infantry Agema; 
they were afterward known as the Silver-Shields 
(Argyraspides), won fame under Philip and Alexander, 
29 



Alexander the Great 

and after the latter's death came to a tragic 
end through their betrayal of their general for a 
reward. Among other special institutions was that 
of the Somatophylakes, seven persons of great honour 
appointed to guard the king's person, evidently as 
a reward for some great deed; while boys of the 
chief families of Macedonia were brought up in the 
court in time of peace, and followed the king to 
war in the capacity of pages. Philip introduced the 
first standing professional army, for the Greek and 
Persian arrays were either citizen or mercenary 
levies. The citizens could not be kept together for 
long, and the mercenaries could not always be trusted, 
but now a national army was in readiness for use at 
any time that the king wished for it, winter or 
summer, and in Macedonia it was an army devoted 
to its king as the tribe is to the chieftain. 

Philip, therefore, created the Macedonian army 
which was to be his son's instrument in conquering 
the world, he consolidated the various Macedonian 
tribes into one nation, and he made that nation a 
wealthy one by obtaining control of the gold-mines 
of Mount Pangseus. Commanding these mines stood 
Amphipolis near the mouth of the Strymon (the 
Struma), on his eastern frontier, and Philip out- 
witted the Athenians and obtained possession of 
Amphipolis in 357 B.C. He definitely abandoned 
iEgse and its traditions; the sovereign of Mace- 
donia was to be no more the chieftain of a semi- 
savage people, but the autocrat of a cultured and 
powerful Greek realm. Philip's mother only learnt 
to read in her old age; but Pella might have claimed 
to be the * Athens of the North' when Alexander 
30 



Philip II of Macedonia 

the Great saw the Hght there in ^^^^ probably in the 
month of October. 

At this time Greece, still blind to coming events, 
invited Philip, as they had grown used to inviting 
the Great King, to interfere in one of their quarrels. 
Twice he attacked Phocis, against which a 'Sacred 
War' had been declared, and although he was 
compelled to withdraw on each occasion he managed 
to make himself overlord of Thessaly on his way 
through, thus adding the fine Thessalian cavalry 
to the Macedonian army. Then he continued to 
annex Greek cities on the coast adjoining Macedonia, 
built a fleet, and at last became a serious menace to 
Athenian trade. The first person to take the alarm 
was the Athenian orator Demosthenes, who by his 
ardent 'Philippics,' commenced to create a panic 
in the city. Many people nowadays think that 
Demosthenes showed lack of political vision, and 
blame him for throwing obstacles in the path of the 
force which was at work striving to create a united 
Greek people. To others he will always remain the 
last defender of his country's liberties and a prophet 
who preached military and naval defence, but was 
unheeded until it was too late. To all he stands for 
a panic-monger whose predictions came to pass. 
Again and again he sought to unite Southern Greece 
against Philip, and at last he inspired the resistance 
which collapsed in 338 b.c. at 'Chaeronea, fatal to 
liberty,' as Milton sang. Meanwhile Philip was 
permitted to come south, pass through Thermopylae, 
and, in a third attack on Phocis, destroy all the 
Phocian cities, even Athens lifting no finger to 
stop him, despite Demosthenes' outcry. Phocis 
31 



Alexander the Great 

had possessed the presidency of the Amphietyonic 
League, and this position of high honour Phihp 
received from the servile electors, the name of 
Phocis being struck off the list altogether. After 
Demosthenes' Second Philippic in 344 B.C., Persia 
was less hated in Athens than was Macedonia. 
Philip took little notice. In 342-1 he made Thrace 
a Macedonian province, and might have conquered 
the Chersonese but for Athens. Then, after a 
successful attack on the barbarians at the mouth 
of the Danube, he turned south for his last and 
fateful journey into Greece. 

This time it was to aid in a * Sacred War' against 
Amphissa. He was allowed by the anti-Macedonian 
party to pass Thermopylae, but at Chaeronea (338 B.C.) 
Thebans and Athenians, and the citizens of many a 
lesser state, including the dispossessed Phocians, 
stood drawn up in battle array to resist the farther 
passage of the Macedonian. A bitter struggle took 
place, and Philip, it is said, would have been slain 
but for the aid of Alexander, who, now a boy of 
eighteen, commanded the cavalry and made the 
decisive attack on the Greek allies. All fled except 
the Sacred Band of Thebes, who fought on until 
they fell, like Leonidas and his Spartans in the days 
of old, and so gave to Chaeronea a glory something 
like that of Thermopylae. 

Athens became a member of the Macedonian 
empire without a further effort, and Philip marched 
south into the Peloponnesus to try to obtain Sparta's 
submission. Entirely without a national spirit, 
Sparta had taken little part in the protection of 
Greece, but she refused to submit to the invader, 
32 



Philip II of Macedonia 

and Philip, after devastating her territories, retired, 
probably grudging the time required for the re- 
duction of this city which was now of so little 
importance in the world. He then held a congress 
of Greek states at the Isthmus of Corinth (337 
B.C.), and was elected commander-in-chief for a 
great expedition against Persia. This appointment 
was the formal acknowledgment of Macedonia's 
supremacy. 

There is nothing to show what was the magni- 
tude of Philip's designs against Persia, and, owing 
to the fact that the Athenians and Spartans of 
Philip's time took no interest in foreign affairs, we 
are entirely ignorant as to what may have been 
the nature of the Persian peril at this point, or 
if it was some commercial advantage which the 
*Maker of Macedonia' proposed to obtain for his 
country from his projected invasion. Certain it 
is that he shares whatever blame there may be 
for this deed with Alexander, for he sent out his 
chief general, Parmenio, in 336 B.C., to occupy 
the other side of the Hellespont and prepare for 
the passage of his army. In this year, however, 
an end was put to this active existence by the 
hand of an assassin. The assassin had a deep 
enough grievance of his own, but it was known 
that he was stirred up by Olympias, the mother 
of Alexander, for a reason of which we shall hear 
later, and some people thought that Alexander, 
utterly estranged from his father, had a hand in 
the business. 

Olympias was a character as much out of the 
ordinary as Philip himself. From Philip Alexander 



Alexander the Great 

got his extraordinarily wide political grasp, his rest- 
less energy, and his indomitable will. His debt to his 
mother is less certain. She was of the royal family 
of Epirus and claimed descent from Achilles, as 
Philip did from Heracles. She, like Phihp, was 
characterized by marvellous energy, and she was 
passionate, revengeful, and mystical, qualities which 
peer out as rare visitants in Alexander. The chief 
fact known about her is her following of the new 
religion which had penetrated into Greece from 
Thrace during the last few centuries. By the close 
of the fifth century the belief of cultured Greeks 
in the old gods of Olympus had waned; even a 
Conservative mocked the old idea of Charon ready 
with his ferry-boat to take souls across to Hades. 
There had sprung up, on the ruins of the old faiths, 
two new forms of religion. The 'philosopher of 
the stage,' Euripides, who exercised the strongest 
influence on religion from his own time until the 
Christian era, revived the Greek idea, found in Homer, 
that human passions are due to possession by the 
gods, so that Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus or Demeter, 
for example, could enter into a man for their own 
purposes, perhaps punishment for neglecting their 
altars, and sway him as they list, to virtue or crime. 
Thus we find Alexander before the battle of Issus 
sacrificing to the god Fear; and he always thought 
that he slew Clitus at a drunken feast because 
Dionysus was angry with him for destroying Thebes, 
the home of the god's mother, Semele. Above and 
beyond these deities, however, the Greeks believed 
that there were Powers which punished wrong- 
doers. The cry of the injured person was in itself a 
34 



Philip II of Macedonia 

curse, and for the righteous man, as Euripides 
sang, 

'Far away. 
Hidden from the eyes of day. 
Watchers are there in the skies. 
That can see man's life, and prize 
Deeds well done by things of clay.' 

The height of the normal faith of Greek and Asiatic 
in the fourth century B.C., as with the Mohammedan 
and Japanese of to-day, was to bow cheerfully to 
the will of Destiny. *Orphism,' however, had given 
to those emotionally inclined a more inspiring faith, 
and Olympias was among its adherents. It was a 
worship of Dionysus and Orpheus, with mysterious 
ceremonies kept so closely secret that, although the 
Initiated were very numerous, little is known of their 
tenets now. There is no sign that Alexander was 
influenced by Orphism, which was, indeed, largely 
a religion of the common people. 

Philip was tired both of the eccentricities of 
Olympias and her temper, and took a young wife, 
Cleopatra, thereby incurring the wrath of both 
mother and son. Alexander went to his father's 
wedding-feast in no very good mood, and we hear 
of the first of those fits of passion which were to 
come on him in after-years in the East. When the 
wine had been circulating freely for ;^ome time, the 
uncle of Cleopatra began to indulge in remarks in- 
sulting to Olympias and to Alexander, and speedily 
received Alexander's drinking-cup full in the face. 
Philip leaped to his feet and drew his sword, ready 
in his drunken frenzy to slay his son, but slipped 
and fell, whereupon Alexander stood taunting him: 
35 



Alexander the Great 

"Look!" he cried to the courtiers, "the man who 
is getting ready to cross over into Asia can't even 
step from one couch to another." 

The prince then took his mother to her kinsfolk 
in Epirus, and himself retired into Illyria. The 
affair was patched up for appearances' sake, but 
there remained a bitterness between father and son 
which nothing could remove, and probably neither 
Olympias nor Alexander ever forgave the slur put 
on both of them. There is a pleasanter side to 
Alexander's relationship with his father, and we 
shall consider it in the next chapter, but a friend- 
ship which seems to have been deep, at least on 
Philip's side, had unfortunately been broken before 
the latter's death. 



36 



^<. , oMA.^^'^-^ 



t*o 



Q 



CHAPTER III: Alexander 
as Prince 

ALEXANDER III, the * Great,' was, as we 
have seen, born at Pella in the autumn of 
356 B.C. while Philip was busy outwitting 
the Athenians in Chalcidice and annexing its towns. 
He had just taken Potidsea, when three pieces of 
good news were brought to him; one was the victory 
of his chariot in the races at Olympia, the second 
was a great slaughter of the Illyrians by a Mace- 
donian army, and the third was the birth of his son 
and heir Alexander. The chief omen which marked 
the night of the boy*s birth was the burning down 
of the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Some 
courtier of Alexandria afterward said that Artemis 
was so occupied on that night with what was going 
on in Macedonia that she forgot her own affairs, but^ 
the people of Asia read a deeper significance into' 
the event. A story was invented that a madman had 
destroyed the splendid building, and when asked 
his reason, replied, *'Only to make my memory 
immortal by a great crime"; and the soothsayers, 
they said, had prophesied that somewhere in the 
world at that hour a man had been born who should 
utterly destroy Asia for a similar reason. Alexander 
was not a madman, but he was certainly born to 
inflict a great deal of evil upon Asia, and so this tale 
is of interest. His childhood as well as his man- 
hood was dominated by the dream of conquering 
the Persian Empire. 

Many are the stories, some no doubt true, many 
of them legends, told us of Alexander's youth; 
37 



Alexander the Great 

and it is curious that, although he was Olympias' 
only child, we should have no single anecdote of 
mother and son in these early years. His foster- 
mother, a noble Macedonian woman named Hellenice 
or Lanice, daughter of Dropidas, held the first place 
in his infancy, and probably continued to do so. 
Her brother Clitus was afterward one of his chief 
generals. When a Greek boy was about six years 
of age his school life began, and Alexander's educa- 
tion seems to have followed the regular course. He 
had for governor his mother's kinsman, Leonidas, 
and for inferior instructor and attendant ('peda- 
gogue,' as the Greeks called it) the Acharnanian 
Lysimachus, while another Acharnanian, Philip, had 
charge of his health and afterward accompanied 
him to Asia as his physician. Anaximenes, then 
or later, taught him rhetoric. Leonidas, perhaps 
instructed by the prince's father, gave the boy a 
Spartan's training, searching his chests to see that 
no unnecessary luxury had been put into them, and 
severely repressing extravagance. Once he stopped 
the child as he was throwing handfuls of incense on 
the fire at a sacrifice, and told him : 

" Thus you may sacrifice when you have conquered 
the regions where frankincense grows." 

Alexander had evidently been chattering about 
his future great deeds, and was annoyed at his 
master's lack of confidence in him. Some years 
later, when his dreams had come true, he sent many 
hundred pounds' worth of perfumes from Asia to 
Leonidas, with the injunction, "Be less stingy in 
sacrificing to the gods, for, as you see in my case, 
they repay generously gifts cheerfully made." 
38 



Alexander as Prince 

Alexander was taught, like Frederick the Great, 
to sleep Httle. Like a young Spartan he scorned 
the adornment of his body, caring for nothing but 
its hardihood and suppleness, and eternally exercising 
it. His one coquetry was his armour. From the 
remark of Leonidas about the incense we know that 
his earliest days were filled with ambitious dreams of 
a well-defined nature — one day, after marvellous 
wars and journeys, he would become lord of Asia; 
and he grew increasingly uneasy at the extent of 
his father's conquests and could hardly contain his 
rage when the Asiatic scheme came to be mooted. 
That was not to come for a few years, but meanwhile 
he informed his companions, Ptolemy, Nearchus, 
Phrygius, Lysimachus and Harpalus, that his father 
would leave nothing great for them to do when they 
were grown up; and when the court was rejoicing 
over some new victory of King Philip's, Alexander 
would sit by in moody silence. When he was seven 
years old, they say, he carefully questioned some 
Persian satraps who had come to the court at Pella, 
how many days' journey it was from Macedonia to 
the Persian capital, what sort of king Artaxerxes 
was, and what sort of an army he had. He would 
seldom engage in useless amusements or j^outhful 
competitions, and when it was suggested that he ran 
swiftly enough to win a prize in the Greek games, 
he said: 

"I would compete if I could have kings for my 
antagonists. " 

At the age of thirteen Philip seems to have con- 
sidered that Alexander's was too high and fine a 
spirit to remain under the control of pedagogues 
39 



Alexander the Great 

any longer, and needed the most skilful management 
if his character was not to be spoiled. It was now 
time for Aristotle of Stagira, son of a court physician 
of Macedonia, to be called in. At Alexander's birth 
Philip, it is said, wrote straightway to Aristotle: "I 
announce to you the birth of my son. I do not so 
much thank the gods that he is born, but because 
his birth happened in your time, by whom he may 
be trained and taught; nor, I hope, will he be un- 
worthy of either of us, nor unequal to the control of 
my kingdom. For I would rather be childless than 
be the unhappy father of a child who should bring 
dishonour to his race. " Thus in 343 e.g. Aristotle, 
not yet as famous as he was to become, was invited 
to try his hand at forming a model ruler, as Plato 
in Sicily had had the opportunity of forming a model 
state. From his own point of view Aristotle was to 
fail as utterly as Plato. 

Philip might well feel secure now that he had 
obtained a tutor like Aristotle for his son. The 
philosopher was a gracious, graceful personality, a 
courilier and the son of a courtier, able to teach 
Alexander the ways of men as well as the contents 
of books. In all branches of human learning the 
saying is still, *'Go back to Aristotle," and Alexander 
is said to have testified that from his father Philip 
he had received life, but from Aristotle the knowledge 
of how to live well. Philip gave them a school-house 
at pleasant Mieza, where * Aristotle's' stone seats 
and shady walks were shown for long. Aristotle 
may have given Alexander his copy of Homer; he 
is said to have corrected the manuscript, and, in 
the three or four years which he spent on the educa- 
40 



Alexander as Prince 

tion of Alexander and his friends, he must have 
thrown new Kght on the whole of Hterature, pohtics 
and rehgion. He probably remained enthroned in 
his pupil's imagination as an authority on literature 
and religion, but Alexander never paid any attention 
to his political ideas. Aristotle had no political 
adaptability. He had been brought up in a Greek 
city-state, and the Greek city-state remained for 
him the one perfect form of government. He 
believed that it should be so small that one man 
could address all the citizens and they might all be 
well known to one another. There is much to be 
said for the small state in the interests of ideal 
government, but there are possibilities of justice 
and virtue under other forms of rule, and to these 
possibilities Aristotle was blind. He does not even 
consider the empire in his Politics. The Persian 
realm, which lay like a waxing moon round Greece, 
was to him merely a congregation of *slaves' under 
a slave-driver. He believed that Asiatics were by 
nature slaves, and he advised Alexander, in a treatise 
On Monarchy, to treat them as such. But on 
this point at least the pupil was a greater states- 
man than the master, and when he became king of 
Asia Alexander put Greek and Asiatic on a foot- 
ing of absolute equality. How he came to it we 
do not know, perhaps it was from his father, but 
Alexander, alone in his age, conceived the great 
doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man. It is not to 
be conceived that Aristotle was ignorant of the 
notion, for he must have turned every human 
institution about in every light; but, like Plato, 
he deeply disapproved of it, both theoretically and 
41 



Alexander the Great 

because in fifth-century Athens cosmopolitanism 
had meant deterioration. Foreign merchants had 
landed and departed in streams at the Piraeus, and 
the adaptable citizens had speedily taken to imitat- 
ing their ways, with the result that the moral founda- 
tions of the state had been threatened; for, already 
in that early age, men adopting new manners and 
customs began to question the existence of a 
Universal Right and Wrong. So deeply did Plato 
feel the danger from this, that he would not have 
had a city built on the coast for fear of the visits of 
foreigners. To him and to Aristotle the inland 
valley of the Eurotas where Sparta reigned was the 
ideal situation for a virtuous state. Alexander in 
Asia was in a false position from Aristotle's point 
of view, and he could give him no reasonable advice. 
We can imagine him discovering with horror that 
this boy, whose opinions were one day to be of such 
importance, had ideas of politics into which his own 
beloved city-state entered not at all, and it is strange 
to picture his position in the Macedonian court 
when it was humming with the excitement of Philip's 
Asiatic plans. Aristotle's political ideas do not 
seem to have influenced Alexander in the slightest, 
and, in revenge, in after-years, when Alexander was 
conquering the world and Aristotle at Athens was 
continuing his Politics, the latter persisted in omit- 
ting the empire, as if too big a monstrosity to notice, 
from his considerations of forms of government. It 
is strange, again, that Aristotle took no notice in 
his scientific writings of the new fauna discovered 
in Alexander's journeys, and, in fact, there seems to 
have been a complete breach between the philosopher 
42 



Alexander as Prince 

and his pupil. When Alexander set out for Asia, 
however, they were still on good terms; the young 
King is said to have invited his master to accompany 
him, to have given him vast sums for his scientific 
pursuits, and furnished him with a thousand natural- 
ists to carry out the details of his investigations. 
Aristotle's treatise On Monarchy was addressed to 
Alexander, and his work Concerning Colonies was 
written as advice to him. On the whole, however, 
the man to whom the world traces back most of its 
intellectual notions, and the man who altered the 
whole course of Western history, brought into the 
closest contact in an important relation, had remark- 
ably little influence on each other's lives. 

That Alexander had great knowledge of geography, 
engineering, and science generally, appears in his 
hfe, but he was, clearly enough, not an all-round 
genius. Montaigne said that it was possible to 
conceive of Socrates in the place of Alexander, but 
not of Alexander in the place of Socrates; most 
people would find it hard to imagine either of these 
things. There is an amusing story of Alexander 
writing from Asia to chide Aristotle for publishing 
books on esoteric philosophy: "You have not 
done well, " ran the letter, "... For wherein will 
your pupils be above others, if those things which 
you have secretly taught us, be made common to 
all? I assure you I would rather excel others in 
learning than in dominion." Aristotle may well 
have thought that Alexander's actions behed his 
words, but he did not say so. Instead he returned 
a polite and soothing missive, saying that these 
books were "published and yet not published," for, 
43 



Alexander the Great 

as Socrates had taught the world, no man could 
learn anything which he did not know already. 
Alexander perhaps meant what he said about pre- 
ferring letters to warfare, and had realized early 
that his life was not his own. In stormy times he to 
whom the book is dear may bear the sword but not 
the crown; and when Alexander lived, the national 
existence of Macedonia, and the expansion which 
was vital to her, depended on the King's practical 
activity. Throughout his life he loved Homer. A 
copy of the poet's work was kept under his pillow 
with his sword, and he bestowed on it a gorgeous 
case from the spoils of Darius' tent after Issus. One 
day when a messenger came running to announce 
a victory, he said, "By the joyful expression of your 
face one would say that Homer had risen from the 
dead!" When far away in Asia he wrote home for 
books, and received copies of nearly all the tragedies 
of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and various 
books of dithyrambic hymns to Dionysus. Whether 
due to the imagination of his biographers or no, 
Alexander seldom speaks except, like Plato's Spartans 
in "some brief compact saying worthy of remark." 
The incident of Bucephalus probably occurred 
when Alexander, at the age of sixteen, about to be 
plunged into the affairs of state, was discontinuing 
Aristotle's tuition, although his master continued 
to live in Macedonia until after his accession, then 
retiring to Athens to make the Lyceum and the 
Teripatetics' famous. The Thessalian Philonicus 
brought the beautiful charger Bucephalus to Bella 
to offer him to Philip for the fancy price of nearly 
£3,000. Thessaly was a famous breeding-place for 
44 



Alexander as Prince 

horses, and the King was accompanied by the Prince 
and many of the nobles when he went out into the 
field to see trial made of the black steed with a white 
star on his forehead. To the general disappoint- 
ment he appeared vicious and unmanageable, and 
was so far from suffering himself to be mounted, 
that he would not bear to be spoken to, but turned 
fiercely upon all the grooms. Phihp was displeased 
at their bringing him so wild and ungovernable a 
horse, and the animal was being led away, when 
Alexander, who had observed him well, said: 

*'What a horse they are losing for want of skill 
and spirit to manage him!" 

As Philip took no notice of this forwardness, 
pretending not to hear, he kept repeating his remark, 
and finally his father said: 

*'My boy, you find fault with your elders as if 
you could manage the horse better yourself. " 

"That I certainly could," answered Alexander. 

"Well, have a try," said Philip, "but if you 
can't ride him, what forfeit will you pay for your 
presumption?" 

"The price of the horse," replied his son. 

The company laughed; the King and Prince 
settled the forfeiture, and Alexander ran toward 
Bucephalus. Taking the bridle he turned the 
horse to the sun, for he had discovered that the 
shadow which fell before him as he moved, frightened 
him. While the animal's rage and agitation lasted 
he merely talked softly to him, stroking him gently, 
but when he felt him beginning to grow eager he 
slipped his mantle to the ground, vaulted lightly 
upon his back and, without whip or spur, set him 
45 



Alexander the Great 

going with a light pull of the reins. At last the 
anxious spectators saw the Prince and Bucephalus 
flying along like the wind, and they recognized that 
it was indeed a fine horse, but they were speechless 
with fear for Alexander's safety. They were amazed 
when Alexander turned and rode him back, the 
horse quivering with excitement but docile as a 
child. Cheers burst forth, but his father wept for 
joy, and, kissing Alexander, said: 

"Seek another kingdom, my son, more worthy 
of your abilities: Macedonia is too small for you." 

Macedonia was too small for either of them or for 
the Macedonians! In this remarkable and immortal 
way Alexander had shown a future ruler of the 
highest kind; he was all his life to be feared, obeyed 
and loved, and bullying was to enter little into the 
matter. In this year Alexander was entrusted by 
his father with the regency of Macedonia while 
Philip was vainly attacking Byzantium, and when 
a revolt of a subject tribe near home broke out, 
Alexander led an army forth, crushed the rising and 
planted the agitated country with colonies, one of 
which he called, in his presumptive way, Alexandro- 
polis. Two years later he led the fateful charge at 
Chseronea, where he saved, it was said, his father's life; 
and for long afterward 'Alexander's Oak' was pointed 
out near the battle-field. Philip, who at this time 
loved Alexander as deeply as he wondered at him, was 
content to hear his son called 'king' and himself only 
'general.' If the Greeks, however, with their fatal 
blindness to the trend of events at this time, paid any 
attention to Alexander's feats, they probably con- 
sidered him a dashing cavalry officer and nothing 
46 



Alexander as Prince 

more. It remains to consider the personal appearance 
of Alexander at the moment of his accession. He 
had been brought up to disapprove of athletics, as 
the excellence of the athlete depended on regularity, 
while for the soldier's life, such as was awaiting 
himself, the body must be trained to submit to 
irregularity. Carefully exercised, however, he be- 
came, like the typical Greek statue, not extremely 
tall nor over-developed, but perfect in proportion 
and grace. Once the bloom of boyhood was passed 
he must have been insignificant looking, for we are 
told that on two occasions visitors ushered into the 
royal presence were in doubt as to which was the 
King. Perhaps his carelessness of dress and deep 
mental absorption caused this. In 1795 the first 
sculpture that could claim to be a portrait of 
Alexander was discovered in Italy, and is now in the 
Louvre. It shows the classical locks, the straight 
Greek forehead, with no break of direction at the 
starting of the hair and with the slightly aquiline 
nose in the same straight line, while the large, clearly 
cut mouth and chin recall, without the dimple, the 
massive beauty of Michael Angelo's "David. " After 
the discovery of this bust, inscribed "Alexander 
son of PhiUp," the Alexander type became better 
known than had been possible from the vague 
descriptions of the ancients, and other representa- 
tions of the conqueror were found. His successors, 
who used his name as their battle-cry, engraved 
his head on their coins, and beautiful portraits of 
Alexander, wearing the lion's scalp of the Heraclid 
sovereigns of Macedonia, are to be seen on the gold 
medallions of Tarsus. A bronze statuette, now at 
47 



Alexander the Great 

Naples, is supposed to be a copy of a life-sized por- 
trait of Alexander by Lysippus after the battle of the 
Granicus; a Pompeian mosaic, with all the quaint- 
ness of drawing of early mosaics, represents him as 
a warrior at Issus; and he is perhiaps to be seen in 
that battle in the famous reliefs of the Sarcophagus 
of Sidon. From nearly all these sculptures he 
appears to have approximated to the best Greek 
type in appearance. His skin, we are told, like 
that of the original David, was white, with a pleasing 
flush on cheeks and breast; but his complexion was 
not like this in the paintings of Apelles, and it is not 
likely that the warlike Macedonian kept his extreme 
fairness of face after he left the nursery; nor would 
it have been considered a beauty at the time. When 
the Spartan king, Agesilaus, wished to sell some 
Asiatic captives as slaves, "their clothes found 
many purchasers; but as to the prisoners them- 
selves, their skins being soft and white on account 
of their having lived so much within doors, the 
spectators only laughed at them," while Agesilaus 
said scornfully to his troops, "These are the persons 
you fight with!" Alexander's lion's mane of hair 
was yellow and curly, his eyes * liquid,' and, it is 
said, of different colours, the left bluQ, the right 
jet black, and his gaze had an extraordinary power 
both of attraction and command. When he grew 
up he clean-shaved. His habit of carrying his head 
a little bent toward the left shoulder has been 
imitated by aspiring soldiers ever since, and his 
fault of walking too rapidly for Greek notions of 
dignity and grace was carefully copied by his *Suc- 
cessors.'^ 

48 



CHAPTER IV: Akxanderin 
Thrace, Illyria, and Greece 

(336-335 B-C-) 

WHEN the news of Philip's assassination 
was brought to Athens the citizens fell 
into holiday-making. Solemn sacrifice was 
made to the gods, and it was determined to present 
a golden crown to his murderer. Demosthenes laid 
aside the mourning which he was wearing for his 
daughter, newly dead, and appeared in public in 
a rich dress and with a garland upon his head; 
and his fellow townsmen, forced to pay Philip honour 
while he lived, now joined, with questionable taste, 
in insulting his memory. Demosthenes once more 
roused Greece, representing that it would be an 
easy task to throw off the yoke of the incapable 
* child' who had mounted the Macedonian throne. 
Nevertheless, he wrote off to the Great King for aid. 

The * child' — he was twenty years of age — might 
have been expected to be too busy at home to 
interfere for some time in Greece. It was only 
by swift action that he secured the throne, and he 
and his mother were forced to offer up a holocaust 
of his kinsfolk (including Cleopatra and her infant), 
a task from which a Macedonian rarely shrank. 
Pirates attacked the coasts, and the highland tribes 
took the opportunity of what they thought would be 
an interregnum to rise. 

Alexander assembled a council of his father's 
oldest servants, and listened attentively to the 
advice they gave him to leave Greece alone, establish 
49 



Alexander the Great 

order at home, and make himself master of the 
neighbouring barbarians. They knew aheady that 
he was a fine soldier, but they did not yet know 
how fine, and they could not yet have guessed with 
what consummate ability he would from the first 
handle the political situation. But he was able to 
persuade them in a remarkable speech that he must 
act while his enemy was unprepared. *'The im- 
pression which a ruler makes," he told them, "at 
the commencement of his reign, remains throughout 
his Hfe. The death of my father has taken by 
surprise the rebels as much as myself, and we must 
seize the opportunity before they rally." Then he 
turned to account the lessons in oratory which he 
had learned from Anaximenes, not the least useful 
of lessons for a king, and addressed the populace. 
The king's name and person had changed, he said, 
but they should perceive no change in policy or rule, 
and he besought the Macedonians to give him the 
same spirits and the same arms with which they 
had fought for his father for so many years with so 
much glory. He offered large rewards for faithful 
service, the one use which Alexander the Great ever 
had for money. 

He appeared in Thessaly before the Greeks had 
any idea of his approach. He had waxed on his way 
from a child to a youth, he said, and Demosthenes 
should find him a man before the walls of Athens. 
Some Thessalians held the narrow pass of Tempe, 
where ten soldiers could dispute the passage of an 
army, but Alexander turned aside and scaled Mount 
Ossa, cutting steps on its lofty sides, and went on 
his way. After this surprising feat Thessaly sub- 
50 



Alexander in Thrace 

mitted and paid tribute, the King exempting the 
city of Phthia, whence his ancestor and pattern, 
Achilles, had come. From Thessaly he proceeded 
to Thermopylae, and was elected president of the 
Amphictyons in his father's place. Thebes and 
Athens made their peace, and a second Congress of 
Corinth appointed Alexander commander-in-chief 
to carry out Philip's designs in Aisa. Sparta alone 
held severely aloof, saying that it was her custom 
to lead, not to follow. 

In a suburb of Corinth took place the delightful 
meeting of Alexander and Diogenes. The Cynic 
philosopher was basking in the sun in a grove of 
cypresses, enjoying the good things which he had 
preferred to a hfe of care and riches, when the 
Macedonian conqueror sought him out. Alexander 
asked him what form a royal favour might take, 
and the idle philosopher replied: 

*'Only stand aside a little, so that you won't be 
between me and the sun. " 

Astonished at this reply and at the man on whom 
he in his greatness could confer nothing, the Mace- 
donian said: 

"If I had not been Alexander, I would have been 
Diogenes. " 

Returning toward Macedonia, he paid a visit to 
Delphi to have his fortune told by the priestess of 
Apollo. There were seasons in which the oracle, 
originally, perhaps, a vernal deity, was dumb, and 
as this was one of them the pythoness refused to 
approach the god. Alexander, however, seized her 
and was dragging her toward the temple, when 
she exclaimed: 

51 



Alexander the Great 

*'My son, you are irresistible!" 

He at once released her, saying that that was 
good enough oracle for him. Apollo had evidently 
gone a little out of fashion in Alexander's time, and 
might be treated in this sacrilegious way. 

When the spring of 335 B.C. came, and all was 
quiet at home, he set forth against the revolted 
Thracians. After a ten days' march his army came 
to Mount Hsemus, where the Shipka Pass was 
occupied by a numerous Thracian army. The bar- 
barians had surrounded themselves by a rampart 
of wagons, which they were prepared to roll down 
on the enemy. Alexander, however, directed his 
troops to commence the ascent, instructing the 
phalanx to open when the wagons came crashing 
down and let them pass, or, if they had not time 
to do this, to throw themselves quickly to the 
ground with their shields over them, close together, 
so that the wagons would roll over the smooth 
metal surface. These stratagems succeeded. The 
perfectly trained battalions opened for the most 
part, and the wagons rolled harmlessly down into the 
valley, but even where they passed over the human 
railway nobody was crushed. The Macedonians 
then charged the heights, uttering their fierce war- 
cries. From their right wing a shower of arrows 
fell among the barbarians, while Alexander, at the 
head of the left wing, gained the top. The almost 
naked and scantily weaponed foe fled to secret 
hiding-places, leaving 1500 men dead on the field. 

Across the Balkans were congregated in arms the 
valiant tribes of the Triballians, who had come from 
their homes in what is now Servia. As Alexander 
52 




ALEXANDER COERCING THE DELPHIC ORACLE 



Alexander in Thrace 

approached tliey fled to an island in the Danube. 
This great stream, then known as the Ister, had 
been the limit of the Persian Empire at its widest 
extent, and Alexander had no idea of going beyond 
the Persians at this point, but he wished to terrify 
the barbarians by making a demonstration on the 
other side of the stream. Byzantium, as an ally, 
had sent him a few ships across the Black Sea to 
the Danube, and, filhng these with archers and 
heavy-armed troops, Alexander sailed up the stream. 
There was, however, a swift, dangerous current 
round the island, and its steep shores made landing 
almost impossible for the small force in the boats, 
while a large army of the warlike Getse had collected 
on the northern bank of the river to bar his way 
if he should attempt to cross. He therefore with- 
drew and waited for nightfall. We shall hear 
him saying later, on a great occasion, "I steal 
no victory!" But we shall always find him steal- 
ing a victory when it is the wisest thing to do. 

The hides which served his soldiers for tents were 
stuffed with hay and stitched together to serve as 
boats, the simple craft of the neighbouring popula- 
tion of fishermen and pirates were gathered together, 
and in the dead of the night the soldiers were con- 
veyed over the river to a spot hidden from view of 
the enemy by a field of standing corn. When dawn 
came the Macedonian army stood glittering in 
battle-array by the side of the slumbering foe. The 
phalanx bristled with its sarissce, while on the right 
of it stood Alexander at the head of a matchless 
band of cavalry. The Getse, startled at the awful 
apparition, did not even wait to be attacked. They 
S3 



Alexander the Great 

fled for their lives to their homes, and, on Alexander's 
approach, took their^families to the far-away moun- 
tains. He razed their chief city to the ground 
and then returned to the stream, where he offered 
sacrifice to Zeus the Saviour, Heracles, and the 
river god. 

Many tribes sent ambassadors to make terms with 
him. From the upper reaches of the Danube came 
envoys from the Celts, and Alexander evidently 
thought the moment favourable for taking down 
their pride. He inquired what they were most 
afraid of in the world, but as they had heard he was 
leaving for Asia and felt pretty safe in their distant 
homes, they did not think it necessary to pay him 
a compliment, and replied simply that they suffered 
a great deal of terror from the idea that the sky 
would one day fall down on their heads. Alexander 
seems to have found no answer, and he used to say 
afterward that the Celts were great braggarts. 

As the Macedonian army was returning home- 
ward through Thrace, news arrived of the revolt 
of various lUyrian tribes subdued by Philip. A 
chieftain named Clitus had seized the city of Pelium, 
almost impregnable from the mountains and thickets 
that surrounded it. At the King's approach the 
rebels made the primitive sacrifice to the gods of 
three boys, three girls, and three black rams, and 
sallied forth. Seized', however, with sudden panic 
at the sight of the phalanx, they retreated in haste 
and stood a siege in their city. Another tribe, under 
Glaucias, arrived to the assistance of Clitus, and 
Alexander found himself in a very diflScult position, 
caught between two warlike forces in a wild moun- 
54 



Alexander in Thrace 

tainous country where the enemy held the heights. 
He therefore retreated, fighting his way through 
the enemy in his rear, and the Illyrians believed that 
the King had gone back to Pella. Alexander, how- 
ever, recrossed the frontier one evening at dusk, 
fell on the united forces of the foe, and slew nearly 
all then* number. Clitus succeeeded in escaping 
back to Pelium, but, not feeling safe there, reduced 
it to ashes and went into exile. News now came to 
Alexander of the rising of Greece. 

For five months Alexander had been absent, and 
the Greeks had been overjoyed to receive tidings 
that he had been slain by the Triballians. A man 
who pretended to have been an eye-witness of the 
event described the battle and showed his own 
wounds to the Thebans and Athenians, who at 
once rejected the Macedonian supremacy, while the 
Thebans slew some of the garrison whom Alexander 
had placed in their Cadmea and besieged the rest 
in that stronghold. Demosthenes and the Thebans 
sent ambassadors to the other Grecian states, and 
Peloponnesian troops assembled at the Isthmus. 
The Great King sent over three hundred talents to 
Demosthenes for war purposes. All this prepara- 
tion was revealed to Alexander as he crossed into 
Macedonia from Illyria. He hastily marched south 
and appeared in Thessaly seven days after leaving 
Pelium. Six days later he encamped in Boeotia, a 
few miles from Thebes. 

Rumours had been circulated regarding the 

approach of the Macedonian army with Alexander 

at its head, but the Thebans entirely discredited 

such stories brought in from, the country-side, and it 

55 



Alexander the Great 

was with horror and despair that they at last per- 
ceived Alexander's cavalry and infantry advancing 
across the Boeotian plain, and finally descried the 
form of the King on his charger. They refused his 
repeated summons to surrender, although he stated 
that he would be content with the death of their 
two leaders, and at last the Macedonian general 
Perdiccas commenced the attack, without waiting, 
it is said, for orders. When the fight had begun 
the Macedonian garrison in the Cadmea descended 
to the King's aid, and after a bitter struggle the city 
of Epaminondas, forced at every gate, fell into the 
hands of the enemy. Men, women, and children, 
combatants and non-combatants, were slaughtered 
by the victorious troops. Six thousand had been 
slain when the order went forth for the massacre to 
stop. Thebes was so hated by her neighbours in 
Boeotia for her tyranny, that, it was said, the Mace- 
donians could not prevent this carnage, in which 
they took no part, but there are signs that Alexander 
wanted to give Greece a severe lesson, and he may 
also have thought Thebes the only city through which 
he had anything to fear from a military point of 
view. He paid Thebes the honour of wiping her out 
of existence. On the day following the fall of the 
city, Alexander summoned a congress of the Greeks 
to decide upon its fate; the voice of the Boeotians 
was allowed to rule, and the walls and entire city 
of 'Seven-gated Thebes' were levelled with the 
ground to the sound of flutes, after the Greek fashion, 
the temples alone being spared. Cassander rebuilt 
the city twenty years later, but the new Thebes 
never rose to greatness like the old. Thirty thou- 
56 



Alexander in Thrace 

sand of the free inhabitants were sold into slavery; 
those exempted, besides the priests, were a few who 
were known to have advocated submission to Mace- 
donia and those who had in former times been the 
hosts of Alexander or his father. Moreover, 

'The great Emathian conqueror bade spare 
The house of Pindarus.' 

Not only was the actual dwelling of the poet left 
standing in the general destruction of the city, but 
Pindar's descendants were pardoned their share in 
the rising. 

The conqueror himself was touched with pity for 
his victims, and never in after-days refused a favour 
to any Theban whom he met on his travels, for 
exile from his city was the saddest fate which could 
befall men to whom even the dwellers in the next 
town were foreigners. 

Many a Theban as he left his ruined home must 
have had on his lips the words of Euripides, the 
poet so dear to this generation: 

'Ah, not that! Better the end: 
The green grave cover me rather. 
If a break must come in the days I know. 
And the skies be changed and the earth below; 
For the weariest road that man may wend 
Is forth from the home of his father.' 

Athens was preparing in great panic for a siege, 
but she was not to receive from Alexander the 
treatment of Thebes. Alexander has been compared 
to a lion whose first fell wrath was now sated, but 
there was generally method behind his , moods of 
cruelty. The one fearful example had been made, 
57 ^ 



Alexander the Great 

and his present task was to reconcile the Greeks to 
their lot. Something, too, must be allowed for the 
Macedonian respect for Athens. It is to the honour 
of Philip and Alexander that they recognized that 
Athens stood for all that was best in the world. 
Alexander hoped, almost to the end of his life, that 
she would be brought to sympathize with his aims; 
he inflicted a merely nominal punishment on her 
when she lay at his mercy at this time, and it was 
only her unchanging disapproval that made him in 
the end very bitter whenever the name of Athens was 
mentioned. 

He demanded the surrender of the orators who 
had addressed the people against him, and Phocion 
called on them to offer themselves up cheerfully for 
the good of their city. The orator Demosthenes 
had the invidious task of persuading the city that 
such a surrender was beneath its dignity. He told 
the people that the wolf was trying to get hold of 
the sheep-dogs that guarded (worried, some people 
thought) , the Athenian fold. It was decided, through 
Demosthenes' eloquence, to defy the King, and 
Athens can have little expected his forbearance. 
She had given an asylum to the refugees from Thebes, 
as she was bound in honour to do, against his express 
commands, and she had stopped the celebration of 
her Mysteries to pay honour to the Theban dead. 
Alexander, however, moderated his demands; he 
would accept, he said, the exile of the orator Chari- 
demus as a sign of submission. His offer was 
accepted by the unwarlike city with relief, and 
Charidemus went into exile. His tongue was to get 
him iUito stiU Worse trouble at the Persian court. 
58 



Alexander in Thrace 

Even Athens had sent to^ congratulate Alexander 
on his victory at Thebes immediately after she had 
closed her doors behind the refugees from the city; 
and now .congratulations and specious excuses 
poured in on him from all parts of Greece, except 
Sparta. He was at first amused when little Megara 
offered him her citizenship, but when he learned 
that no stranger since Heracles had been admitted 
to that honour he graciously accepted it. He then 
returned to Macedonia and prepared to set forth 
on the conquest of Asia in the succeeding spring. 



59 



CHAPTER V: The Conquest 
of Asia Minor (3 34-33 3b.c 



ALEXANDER had not been two years on 
the throne when he left Macedonian shores 
, for ever. His father's ministers, Parmenio 
and Antipater, strongly disapproved at first of his 
haste to attack Persia, but Alexander was able to 
persuade them that if he did not attack Persia, 
Persia would attack Macedonia. As it was decided 
to attack Persia no one will ever know if the King 
was right, but it seems highly probable. The Great 
King must have seen by this time that gold had 
done all that it could do, and that, if he was to 
remain in possession of Asia Minor, he must take up 
arms against Macedonia. Moreover, but for Mace- 
donia Greece was so weak that it might easily at this 
time have been made into a Persian satrapy. The 
Macedonian progress through Greece had made this 
clear. Finally, Macedonia could not support all 
her stirring children; there was no room for them 
in Greece; and Asia offered them a plentiful field. 
Alexander reminded his councillors that the Ten 
Thousand Greeks with Xenophon in 401 B.C. had 
penetrated into the heart of Asia and found Asiatic 
troops no match for them, and that the Lacedse- 
monian king Agesilaus had ravaged Lydia, Phrygia, 
and Paphlagonia. In the end Parmenio became as 
eager as the King. He was never of much use as 
a councillor, but until extreme old age he showed 
himself a general worthy of Philip's praise: Philip, 
scornful of the democratic institutions of Athens, 
once said that the Athenians were extremely favoured 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

in having a supply of ten generals yearly; he had 
only found one (Parmenio) in many years. Long 
harangues were made to the soldiery about the 
effeminate Asiatics, who wore trousers and other 
unseemly garments, and were so wealthy that the 
spoils of a few pitched battles would make the 
Macedonians rich for life. Nor were appeals to 
their appetite for glory forgotten. 

When news arrived of Alexander's preparations, 
Darius III, who had succeeded to the Persian throne 
in the year of Alexander's accession, made what 
he considered adequate arrangements for destroying 
the rash invader. Adopting the policy of setting 
Greek to fight Greek, he hired 50,000 Greek merce- 
naries, over whom was placed Memnon, a Greek 
of Rhodes. Memnon sought to seize Cyzicus, and 
from that base prevent Alexander's passage of the 
Hellespont, but Parmenio managed to keep this 
city for Alexander, and had everything ready for the 
King's crossing. 

Macedonian resources were infinitesimal in com- 
parison with those of Darius, especially as Alexander 
did not care to call for soldiers, whom he could 
not have entirely trusted, from the cities of Greece. 
His army is supposed to have numbered 30,000 foot- 
soldiers and 5,000 cavalry, mostly Macedonian and 
Illyrian. His fleet was a negligible quantity, while 
Persia had all the ships of Cyprus and Phoenicia. 
Despite Philip's wealth his expenditure had been 
so great that Alexander not only found the treasury 
practically empty, but the state heavily in debt; 
and when he declared war on Persia he had raised 
this debt from 500 to 1 ,300 talents. The Great King 
6i 



Alexander the Great 

slept every night with many times that amount 
under his head and feet! The Macedonian army 
started with supplies for thirty days only. Before 
he left, Alexander, who had no gold to scatter, made 
such large gifts of land to those whom he wished to 
bind to his service, that at last Perdiccas said to him: 

"If you give away so much, what will you have 
left for yourseK?" 

*'Hope!" replied Alexander. 

*'But in that," answered Perdiccas, "we too 
share, since we fight with you," and he refused the 
estate offered him. 

Antipater was installed as regent of Macedonia 
during the King's absence, and after sacrificing to 
Olympian Zeus and giving a great feast to the 
gods, Alexander said farewell to Macedonia and 
led his army along the coast through Macedonia and 
Thrace to Sestos on the Hellespont. Thence he sent 
Parmenio, with the larger part of the army, over 
to Abydos, by the route which Leander swam in the 
legendary days of Greece. The King, before crossing, 
visited Elseus, where he offered sacrifice on the tomb 
of Protesilaus, the first Greek to fall in the Trojan 
War, and prayed that he might land in the foeman's 
country under better auspices. Then, entering his 
ship and taking the helm himself, he turned his back 
on Europe for ever. 

In the middle of ^the Hellespont he sacrificed a 
bull to Poseidon and the Nereids, and flung into the 
sea as an offering the golden cup from which the 
libations had been poured. As they came into the 
harbour of Sigeum, the King hurled a javelin on to 
the shore, "to take seisin," our English forefathers 
62 



The Conquest of Asia Mifior 

would have said. He was the first to leap from the 
vessel, and he caused altars to be erected, both here 
and on the spot where he had left Europe, to Zeus, 
Heracles, and Pallas. At Troy he behaved like a 
romantic boy on the Grand Tour. In honour of 
the shade of his great ancestor Achilles, he and his 
companions ran naked to the hero's tomb, on which 
they poured oil and placed a garland. Hephsestion, 
says legend, crowned the tomb df Achilles' friend 
Patroclus to signify that he loved Alexander as 
Patroclus loved Achilles. Hephsestion had not yet 
become Alexander's favourite, but in after-days his 
death was to be mourned by the King in as tragic 
a fashion as that in which the old Homeric hero 
bewailed the slaughter of his companion. Some one, 
perhaps a mendicant, or even a curiosity-vendor at 
his stall, offered the King the *Iyre of Paris,' only 
to be told sternly: 

*'I care nothing for this vile instrument of un war- 
like delights! Bring me Achilles' lyre! That will 
play the kind of music I shall like to hear!" 

The shade of Priam received its honours, and 
special sacrifice was offered to the goddess Pallas, 
who had been so helpful to the Greeks in the Trojan 
War; in her temple Alexander left his arms, taking 
in their place some said to have been consecrated 
there from the time of the fall of Troy. He secured 
what he believed was the immortal shield of Achilles, 
and in days to come it was to save him in a miracu- 
lous fashion. Alexander picked up his armour, 
every piece notable, as he went on. His cuirass 
was among the spoils of the battle of Issus; the 
King of Citium gave him his famous sword, and the 
63 



Alexander the Great 

Rhodians presented him with his belt, made by 
the renowned Heheon. His helmet, the work of 
Theophilus, shone like silver, and was adorned by a 
lofty and magnificent white feather terrible to see 
as it nodded in war. These arms, objects of venera- 
tion for long after the conqueror's death, came into 
the possession of the Roman general Pompey the 
Great, and were shown by him in his last Triumph. 
Alexander joined Parmenio at Arisbe and com- 
menced to take the towns in the neighbourhood, 
unopposed by the Persians. They may have thought 
to get him away from his ships and then utterly 
destroy his army, but it was more likely the fatal 
Asiatic custom of waiting to be attacked. Again 
and again, in Asia, the Persians allowed Alexander 
to choose his battle-field and his time and mode of 
fighting. The satraps of the West assembled at 
Zeleia, a city at the foot of Mount Ida, and the able 
Greek mercenary Memnon advised them to lay 
waste the country and retire, so that the Macedonians, 
who had no commissariat, would be driven by famine 
to retreat. Meanwhile the Persian fleet could have 
forced its way into the Hellespont and cut off the 
Macedonians* return route. If this scheme had 
been carried out, the world might never have heard 
again of Alexander the Great, but the satraps did 
not entirely trust Memnon, and they were afraid 
that Darius would not approve of their abandoning 
the peoples of Asia Minor to the mercy of the in- 
vader, the more so as, far from appreciating the 
danger, he expected them to destroy the invading 
force as it was trying to land. To make Memnon 
further suspect to the Persians, Alexander, as usual 
64 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

aware of what was passing in his enemies' minds, 
forebore to ravage some estates of Memnon's. 

It was at a ford of the River Granicus, a stream 
which rises in Mount Ida and falls into the Sea 
of Marmora (the Propontis) near Cyzieus, that 
Alexander found the satraps' army, stationed on the 
opposite bank, awaiting him. The spirits of the 
Macedonians failed them when they saw the wide, 
rapid river running between steep banks and guarded 
by a force inferior, indeed, to their own in infantry, 
but infinitely superior to it in cavalry. To ford 
the stream within range of the enemy and climb 
the bank in disorder in its face seemed madness. 
Parmenio advised the King to wait to see if the 
Persians would retire, but Alexander answered: 

"I should be ashamed, Parmenio, if, after having 
crossed the Hellespont so easily, I should be stopped 
by this brook. . . . Moreover, the Persians might 
regain courage by our hesitancy, as being a match 
in war for Macedonians." 

He arranged his army in the usual Macedonian 
way, with the phalanx in the centre, the cavalry on 
the wings. To Parmenio was always entrusted the 
supreme command on the left, while Alexander 
himself led on the right. The Persian cavalry 
numbered about 20,000, and their infantry was 
somewhat less than that. This great cavalry force 
was placed in front of the Persian infantry, and was 
densely massed at the spot where it was thought 
Alexander would try to land. The enemy saw 
clearly his shining armour and great white feather, 
and knew who he was by the respect paid him. At 
last they perceived him give a word of command 
6s 



Alexander the Great 

followed by a movement of his host. Amyntas, son 
of Arrhabseus, at the head of the skirmishing cavalry, 
the Pseonians and one infantry regiment, rushed 
into the river. Then with a flourish of trumpets and 
shouting of their war-cry to Ares, the right wing 
under Alexander entered the water, the King keeping 
his line extended obliquely in the direction in 
which the stream flowed, to guard against Persian 
attack on his flank as he emerged from the water. 

Javelins and darts were showered down from the 
high bank opposite as the Macedonians sought to 
land, and after they had forced their way up a 
fierce fight took place on the brink of the stream. 
Alexander became the centre of a desperate cavalry 
engagement, in which it seemed as if the invaders 
would be thrust backward and downward into the 
water. It was some time before the Persians began 
to give way and were pushed back into the plain. 
Alexander's spear was shivered, and a guard from 
whom he demanded one brandished a broken stump 
and bade him ask of some one else. Demaratus of 
Corinth, one of the Companions, gave him his, and 
Alexander dashed away to smite Mithradates, son- 
in-law of Darius, to the ground. Rhoesaces there- 
upon struck Alexander with such force that a piece 
of his helmet fell off and the scimitar touched his 
hair; but Alexander, turning, pierced him with 
his lance. Spithridates, satrap of Lydia and Ionia, 
stole behind Alexander and had raised his scimitar 
to slay him through the hole in his helmet, when 
Clitus, brother of his foster-mother Lanice,^ pre- 
vented the blow by striking off the satrap's arm. 

By this time the entire Macedonian army stood in 
66 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

order on tlie Persian side of the stream, and made a 
charge which broke the Persian centre; it turned, 
and the wings followed. Alexander did not pursue 
far; the strongest part of the Persian army, the 
Greek mercenaries, of whom no use had been made, 
still stood where they had first been posted, on a 
neighbouring eminence, and against these he now 
turned. After a sharp skirmish, in which the young 
King's horse (he was not riding Bucephalus) was 
killed under him, 2,000 of them were taken prisoners, 
the rest slain, with the possible exception of a few 
who had crept in among the dead upon the battle- 
field. The captives were sent in chains to Macedonia 
to till the soil, on the ground that they were fighting 
against Greece for foreigners in defiance of the 
Edict of Corinth. About twenty-five Macedonian 
Companions had been slain at the onset. Alexander 
ordered bronze statues of them to be made by 
Lysippus and in 148 B.C., when the Roman governor 
Metellus conquered Macedonia, he carried away these 
statues to decorate the portico of his own house in 
Rome. The Macedonian losses at the Granicus 
were very light, and Alexander granted the parents 
and children of the slain freedom from military 
service and from various imposts, and visited and 
chatted with the wounded, letting them show their 
wounds and brag of their deeds. 

The conqueror, in the first flush of success, sent 
to Athens to inform her of a victory in which she 
took no pleasure, and presented the old leader of 
Hellas against Persia with three hundred suits of 
Persian armour, to be hung up in the Acropolis with 
the inscription: "Alexander, son of Philip, and all 
67 



Alexander the Great 

the Greeks except the Lacedemonians, present this 
offering from the spoils taken from the Asiatics." 
Much of the spoil, precious raiment and goblets, he 
sent to his mother; it is significant, however, that 
the public offering went to Athens, not to Pella, 
showing that he thought little of Pella and much of 
Athens, and also that he hoped to stir up in Athens 
her old ardour against Persia. 

Alexander proceeded to form Asia Minor into a 
Macedonian province, exacting the same tribute 
that Darius had received and allowing old institu- 
tions to continue. Some of the Greek cities resisted 
him, but most of them seized the opportunity to 
overthrow the oligarchy or tyranny under which 
they suffered, and established democracies under 
Macedonian protection. Persia had rarely allowed 
democratic constitutions. In a few cities garrisons 
mostly composed of faithful Greek mercenaries 
stood out for their Persian employers. Sardis sent 
ambassadors to proffer submission, thereby saving 
Alexander the siege of a town with a citadel on an 
almost impregnable rock surrounded by a three- 
fold wall. The account books he found here showed 
what large sums the Greeks, especially Demosthenes, 
had received for anti-Macedonian propaganda, and 
from this time forward he cared less for the opinion 
of the Athenians. Perhaps he did not know before 
what sums had been spent by his father in winning 
over a pro-Macedonian party in Greece. His father, 
we are told, warned him that bribery was bad 
policy, fearing that Alexander should try to make 
his own party in the state, and the boy may quite 
well have felt a shock when he learned that the so 
68 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

lofty-seeming Athenians could be bought and sold. 
After a few years he ceased to write to anybody 
in Europe as a friend except Antipater and the 
Athenian orator Phocion, who had spoken for him 
against Demosthenes. 

The Greek mercenaries at Ephesus fled at the 
news of the Granicus, and the people were just about 
to stone their oligarchs to death when Alexander 
arrived. He had a triumphal reception in this great 
city where St Paul was afterward to live and work. 
Apelles, the only painter whom Alexander would 
ever allow to portray him, lived here, and perhaps 
the artist now made a quick study of the youthful 
conqueror fresh from his first great battle in Asia. 
To replace the temple of Artemis, destroyed on the 
night of his birth, Alexander allowed the city to 
keep the tribute due to him as successor of Darius, 
and in the new temple was placed one of Apelles' 
portraits of the King holding the hghtning, a mar- 
vellous work of art. Lysimachus reduced most of 
the cities of Ionia and iEolia, but Miletus, the chief 
city of Ionia until its destruction by the Persians 
in 494, offered a more serious resistance. Alexander's 
admiral, Nicanor, secured the harbour, but the 
Persian fleet lay anchored near, ready to give assist- 
ance to the garrison, and Parmenio advised Alexander 
to fight a naval battle. Alexander, however, knew 
that the enemy was stronger at sea than himself, and 
refused. The Milesians offered the Macedonians 
privileges of trading equal to those they gave the 
Persians, but received the answer that they must 
expect an attack at day-break. On the morrow 
Nicanor held the harbour while Alexander's batter- 
69 



Alexander the Great 

ing-engines made breaches in the city walls. Soon 
the soldiery streamed into the town and slew nearly 
all the inhabitants. Three hundred escaped by 
leaping down into the sea and floating on their 
shields to a neighbouring island, but they were 
captured and compelled to enter the Macedonian 
army as mercenaries. The Persian fleet, unable to 
tempt the astute young soldier into an engagement, 
sailed away. In the siege Alexander's two foster- 
brothers were slain. In this city, which had been 
so great and flourishing of old, there stood so many 
statues of Milesian athletes of distinction, that 
Alexander cried: "Where were all these strong 
people when the Persians conquered you?" And 
no doubt he thought of what Aristotle used to say 
about the uselessness of athleticism. 

The most desperate resistance with which Alex- 
ander met in Asia Minor was at Halicarnassus, 
the present Budrum, a Carian city on the south- 
west coast, strongly placed and strongly fortified. 
Visible from far in Alexander's time was the gigantic 
quadriga, with the statues of Mausolus and Artemisia 
which now stand in their majesty in the Brit- 
ish Museum. The city had a garrison of Asiatics and 
Greek mercenaries under Memnon, whom Darius, 
too late, had appointed governor of Lower Asia as 
well as supreme commander of the fleet; and it had 
several warships in the harbour. For long Alexander 
employed in vain the great siege engines evolved 
in this century in Syracuse and perfected by Philip 
and himself. No better artillery was made for 
many a long day. The Macedonians filled up the 
trench, thirty cubits wide and fifteen cubits deep, 
70 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

dug by the citizens round their wall, under a fire of 
ammunition from the balistse of the besieged. When 
at last the wall began to give way before their 
battering-engines, they found that the defenders 
had built up a second wall, in the shape of a crescent, 
behind the first. Daring sorties and daring attacks 
caused much bloodshed on both sides. Not wishing 
to repeat the carnage of Ephesus, and yet determined 
not to be merciful in the face of defiance, Alexander 
spared the city when he might have taken it, hoping 
to receive a surrender, as it was plain that it could 
hold out no longer. Memnon, however, meant to 
fight to the end. He caused the weapons in the 
town to be set on fire lest they should fall into 
Macedonian hands, and prepared to retreat to the 
citadels still untaken. The wind bore the flames 
toward the houses, and at midnight the Macedonians 
saw the city they had determined to take on the 
morrow wrapped in raging flames. The King at 
once led out his troops, entered the town and slew 
the incendiaries. Most of the defenders escape 
to the citadels, and Alexander decided to leave 
them there. Razing their city to the ground, he 
appointed Ptolemy with a strong force to hold this 
region. As viceroy of Caria he instituted Ada, its 
former queen, who adopted him as her son. She 
was sister of the famous Mausolus, husband of 
Artemisia, the builder of the Mausoleum, and had 
been deposed from her throne by another brother. 
At Alexander's approach she went to meet him and 
offered the surrender of the city of Alinda, which she 
still ruled, and she was treated by him in a way that 
did much to reconcile neighbouring native potentates 
71 



Alexander the Great 

to his rule. The queen's gratitude took the form of 
sending Alexander wonderful table delicacies and 
the offer of chefs, but the pupil of Leonidas told her 
that his mouth was easy to please and his old governor 
had taught him how to find the best cooks: walk 
from break-of-day till dinner-time; and, for supper- 
appetiser, a small dinner. 

From Caria Alexander sent home the young men 
who had married just before leaving Macedonia 
and might naturally be supposed to wish to visit 
their wives. Their officers were to bring them back 
with as many recruits as possible in the spring. He 
then dispatched Parmenio by way of Sardis to 
Phrygia, where all were to meet for the campaign of 
333 B.C., and himself spent the winter in subjugating 
the inhabitants of the Lycian and , Pamphylian 
coasts. His fleet was so poor that he disbanded it 
as useless. He had probably already conceived the 
idea of winning over the enemy's fleet by seizing 
the sea-board. In any case, he could not leave the 
strongest part of the hostile force behind him, and so, 
instead of pushing on to the Persian capitals in the 
following spring, he had determined to make himself 
master of the entire coast of the Persian Empire 
from the Hellespont to the western frontier of Egypt. 

In Lycia, Marmaria offered a stubborn resistance, 
and finally her citizens fired their town and escaped 
to the mountains. At Phaselis Alexander rested, 
as the roads were impracticable, and honoured the 
memory of his dead friend Theodectes, a fellow- 
pupil under Aristotle. A Lycian spring, we are 
informed, cast forth an inscription: "The end of the 
Persian Empire approaches." 
72 




ALEXANDER CUTTING THE GORDIAN KNOT 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

In Pamphylia Alexander sent part of his army 
by the mountain road and himself proceeded by the 
beach at a point only uncovered when the north 
wind blew, in ordinary times. Now some miracle 
occurred: either the wind changed suddenly to the 
north or the boisterous sea retired. * Alexander's 
luck' was proverbial in a later, irreverent age. 

Turning inland, the King then proceeded toward 
Phrygia, the place he had appointed for a general 
meeting for the next campaign. At Gordium, the 
capital of the old Phrygian kings, on the Persian 
* Royal Road,' he found the young married men and 
new levies from Macedonia, and also ambassadors from 
Athens to beg for the releaseof the Athenians captured 
fighting for Persia at the Granicus, and now convicts 
in Macedonia. The request was refused on this and 
several other occasions, but was ultimately successful. 

At Gordium, in the temple of Zeus, Alexander 
was shown a cart on which, it was said, Gordium, 
father of King Midas, used to drive. It was a very 
common object, with the exception of intricate 
knots, of which the ends were hidden, fastening the 
yoke. The inhabitants affirmed that an oracle 
had declared that he who should untie the knot 
should be king of Asia. Naturally Alexander was 
expected to make an attempt to unloosen the knot, 
and he offered to do so. A crowd of Phrygians and 
Macedonians stood round the King — the Phrygians 
curious, the Macedonians fearful of his failure. He 
tried in vain to undo it in legitimate fashion, and 
then boldly cut the knots with his sword, saying: 
*'H(yw doesn't matter!" All his plans for becoming 
lord of Asia were prospering; Memnon, the only 
73 



Alexander the Great 

Persian leader of talent, had been busily capturing 
islands in the iEgean at the head of a powerful fleet, 
but was now dead, while Antipater, regent in Mace- 
donia, had managed to rake together some ships and 
had captured eight Phoenician vessels one dark night. 

After subjugating Cappadocia and receiving the 
submission of Paphlagonia, Alexander, in 333 B.C., 
advanced to the Gates of Cilicia, as the chief pass 
over the Taurus at this point was named. The 
Gates being guarded, he tried a night attack. His 
approach was observed, but the discovery served 
him better than a surprise would have done, so 
invincible did he already seem. The defenders 
fled when they saw his form, and at dawn, thanking 
his lucky stars (or the gods), Alexander passed 
through the Gates and descended into Cilicia, de- 
vastated by the Persians who, again too late, were 
following the former advice of Memnon. Now they 
had fled when, from the mountains above, a small 
force could have easily stoned Alexander's army to 
death as it walked four abreast through the narrow 
pass. They were about to destroy Tarsus when 
Alexander, by a forced march, appeared and saved 
the city, and then the Persians abandoned a province 
made easy to defend by nature herself. 

Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul and the last 
resting-place of Julian the Apostate, was an im- 
portant city from its position on the River Cydnus 
at a point where roads led north to the Cilician 
Gates, the entrance to Asia Minor, and east to the 
Syrian Gates, the entrance to Syria. Here, through 
bathing in the Cydnus (now the Tersoos-Chai) while 
very hot, perhaps already feverish, Alexander fell 
74 



The Conquest of Asia Minor 

dangerously ill. His recovery was despaired of by 
all but his childhood's doctor, Philip. Philip was 
tending him and about to give him a dose of medicine 
when a messenger hastened in with a letter from 
Parmenio stating that Philip had been bribed by 
Darius to poison the King. Alexander read the letter, 
handed it to Philip and, while the latter was reading 
it, drained the cup. He recovered, and ever after- 
ward showed great favour to Philip. There was no 
doubt some laughter against Parmenio; but the 
moral of the story was Alexander's royal fearlessness. 

From Tarsus Parmenio was sent on to capture the 
Syrian Gates, while Alexander visited Anchialus. 
Here were the ruins of a city said to have been founded 
by the last Assyrian king, Sardanapalus, and written 
on a monument in Assyrian characters Alexander saw 
this inscription, so alien from his own turn of thought: 

"Sardanapalus built Anchialus and Tarsus in 
one day; but do thou, O stranger, eat, drink and be 
merry, since that is the best life has to give us." 

The King went on to Soli (now Mezetli), whence 
our word 'solecism' has sprung, through the rough 
Greek spoken by its people. He left a garrison 
there, and thence dashed inland into the mountains 
and defeated a little gathering of desperate Cilicians. 
Returning to Soli he received news that the last 
citadel of Halicarnassus had fallen, and that all 
resistance was dying out in Caria. He then offered 
sacrifice to Asclepius for his return to health, and 
held games and a torch race. Leaving Soli he 
performed sacrifices at Mallus to the shade of Amphi- 
lochus, and there received news that Darius was en- 
camped within two days' march of the Syrian Gates. 
75 



CHAPTER VI: The Conquest 
of Syria and Phoenicia 
(333-332B.C.) 

IN the late autumn of 333 B.C. the great battel 
of Issus took place. Darius, the unfortunate 
Persian monarch whose reign fell in Alexander's 
day, had at last taken the field in person against the 
Macedonian invader and assembled a vast oriental 
army on a Syrian plain very suitable for arraying 
such a force. Darius was burning with impatience 
to meet his enemy, and, as Alexander still tarried in 
Cilicia, he broke up his camp and sought him, believ- 
ing that he had retreated on news of the approach of 
such an overwhelming force led by the sacred majesty 
of Persia. Thus he entered Cilicia by the Amanic 
Gates at the same time that Alexander was hastening 
into Syria by the Syrian Gates. The Athenian 
orator Charidemus, now living at the Persian court, 
was slain for warning Darius of the excellence of the 
Macedonian army, and evil dreams in vain visited 
Darius' pillow as he tossed on the magnificent couch 
in his rich tent. In Asia and in Greece it was be- 
lieved that Alexander's army could never face the 
multitudinous host of Asia, led by the Great King in 
person. 

When Alexander heard that he had passed Darius 
unawares, he turned and came up with him at Issus 
and was hardly able to believe his own good fortune 
in the chance of the battle-field; the superiority of 
the Asiatics in numbers was entirely nullified by 
the nature of the ground, a coast plain only three 
76 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

miles broad. The River Pinarus, which flows west 
into Issus Bay, lay between the two armies, and 
Alexander proceeded to arrange his lines on the south 
side of the stream, with the sea to his left and the 
mountains to the right — as near to the sea as possible, 
so that the foe, who held the mountain heights, 
might not cast down missiles on his army. At the 
same time he had to guard against the possibility of 
being outflanked on his right. As it turned out, the 
Asiatics on the heights fled when a small force that 
Alexander sent to keep them in check approached, 
and troops detached by Darius to turn the flank of 
the Macedonians failed to execute their orders. 
Alexander made one of the eloquent speeches with 
which he roused his soldiers' hearts to war. When 
he closed, the soldiers shouted with one voice that 
they only wished to be led on. The King then rode 
slowly forward, restraining their impetuosity so that 
they might not be out of breath, but when he came 
to the Pinarus he let them go. They dashed swiftly 
across the stream and up its precipitous sides to meet 
the foe on the top of the bank. A cavalry fight like 
that at the Granicus followed. The riders were so 
closely locked together that even those who wished 
to do so could not fly. All the time, Alexander, both 
soldier and general, sought to come to Darius, clear 
to view, seated in his chariot in the centre of his 
army and surrounded by his chief subjects. His 
valiant brother Oxathres, a prominent figure, fought 
near him, slaying every would-be assailant, and round 
the royal chariot soon lay a heap of corpses of the 
most distinguished Persians slain in the defence of 
Darius. Alexander, in endeavouring to reach him, 
77 



Alexander the Great 

received a wound in the thigh. At length the 
Persian monarch, who had shown great personal 
courage in earlier years, was either seized with panic 
or thought it right to save himself. He turned to 
flee away in his chariot, but the country soon proving 
too rough he leaped to the ground, cast off the 
insignia of royalty, leaving even his bow, and rode 
away on a horse kept for this contingency. The two 
great kings had come face to face, and the Genius of 
Darius was rebuked under that of Alexander. The 
greater part of his army followed him in flight, the 
soldiers throwing away their armour that they might 
fly the faster. Alexander longed to pursue, since 
Asia was not his until he had captured Darius, but 
he was forced to return by a call for help from his 
own left wing. The Persian right had compelled 
the Thessalian cavalry on Alexander's left to give 
ground, even pushing them back across the Pinarus. 
Before he arrived, however, the Thessalians had 
rallied and slain their opponents, daunted by the 
way the battle had gone on the other side of the field. 
Alexander then set out in pursuit of the fugitives, 
but the Great King was already far away, and at 
nightfall he returned. Sparta and Athens at this 
time were rejoicing over tidings that Alexander was 
blocked up in Cilicia by the Persians in the last 
extremity! Meanwhile 100,000^ Asiatics lay dead 
upon the field or along the line of flight, a ravine being 
bridged by the pursuers by filling it with corpses, 
and the air round them was heavy with the scent of 
death and resounding with the howls of beasts of prey. 

1 We cannot be sure of these numbers and it seems probable that 
the accounts exaggerate. 

78 




THE FIGHT 



ABOUT THE CHARIOT OP DARIUS AT ISSUS 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

The Macedonian conquerors were holding their 
revels in the tents of the vanquished at Alexander's 
return, and he found that his soldiers had already 
entered the tents of the enemy, religiously reserving 
for their King the personal possessions of Darius, in- 
cluding his wife and children. The greater part of the 
baggage with most of the women and children had 
been bestowed at Damascus, but there was never- 
theless much to seize in the luxurious Persian tents. 
The King found the ground strewn with purple 
raiment, gold, silver and precious stones dropped 
by the pillagers on their way to their own quarters, 
while the shrieks and sobs from the women's quarters 
testified to the brutality with which the non-com- 
batants were being treated by the rough soldiery. 
Alexander arrived hot and dusty from the chase of 
the Persians, and exclaimed eagerly as he entered 
the camp that he should wash off the sweat of battle 
in Darius' own bath. He amused himself with all 
the toilet accessories of the Great King, the basins, 
ewers, and vials of perfume all of purest gold, wrought 
with skill, and with luxuries and appointments new 
to his simplicity. He examined the bed-chamber 
and feast prepared, and then, instead of flouting it 
as a Spartan king would have done, he said, "This 
was a king indeed!" A new notion of monarchy was 
already forming in the mind of the Macedonian chief. 

He and his intimates, bathed and probably per- 
fumed, were enjoying their magnificent feast, when 
they became aware of anguished groans in the neigh- 
bouring tent. Alexander sent the guard, who entered 
and found the ancient Sisygambis, mother of Darius, 
and his beautiful wife, Statira, with her children, 
79 



Alexander the Great 

lamenting the death of Darius. The royal mantle 
had been found and brought to the harem as a 
sure token of the Great King's death. Alexander, 
it is said, was moved to tears, and sent Leonnatus 
and some guards to assure the royal family that 
Darius lived. They received the news of Leonnatus* 
approach in sullen silence, believing that Alexander 
had sent to murder them in their turn. The mes- 
senger was forced to enter unbid, and they threw 
themselves at his feet to beg, not for life, but that 
before death they might bury Darius with due rites. 
Their fears were at once dispelled, and they were 
treated by Alexander in a way that was highly 
praised by the ancients. It is even said that his 
captives became attached to him as to a son and 
protector, and afterward, shortly before his death, he 
married one of the children, Statira. 

Alexander continued southward along the coast of 
Phoenicia, sending Parmenio to Damascus to secure 
the treasure of Darius. At Marathus a letter from 
Darius arrived, begging for the surrender of his 
mother and wife and children, and reproaching 
Alexander for his invasion of Asia. To this letter 
Alexander replied that the predecessors of Darius 
had invaded Greece, that Darius had commenced 
the present war by aiding Alexander's Grecian 
enemies, and that Darius had bribed his father's 
assassins; he was a murderer and usurper, but if he 
came to Alexander in person (and Alexander would 
send hostages) he should receive whatever he should 
demand, but *'in future," concluded the King, 
"address me as King of Asia, and not as your equal. 
Make your request as of one who is lord of all your 
80 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

lands. If you do not do this you will be considered 
as a rebel, or, if you like, we will fight another battle 
on the subject. And save yourself the trouble of 
running away, for wherever you go, I shall follow 
you." Alexander then left Marathus and occupied 
Byblus, which stood on a hill near the sea and was 
said to be the oldest city in the world and the 
birthplace of Adonis. Sidon welcomed him eagerly. 
He deposed its king, a Persian protege, and a 
romantic story is told of the choice of a new king by 
Hephsestion. According to the laws of Sidon the 
sovereign must be of the royal house, and it appeared 
that a humble gardener in the district was of this 
blood, besides being of primitive virtue. The deputies 
of Hephaestion sought him out and found him weed- 
ing. They saluted him as king, bathed him, clothed 
him in purple, decked him with the royal insignia, 
and led him to the palace, where he managed to keep 
his simple nature unspoiled. 

Tyre alone in Phoenicia remained independent. 
Old Tyre lay on the mainland. Tyre proper on an 
adjacent island, the "island of the princes of the 
sea," "full of wisdom and perfect in beauty," 
described by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. 
Shalmaneser had besieged it for five years, and 
Nebuchadnezzar had invested it for thirteen years 
in vain, although the King of Tyre ultimately con- 
sented to pay tribute, and the city was now tributary 
to Persia. Alexander sent to inform its king that 
an oracle had bidden him sacrifice to Heracles, 
with whom Melkart, an old Phoenician deity, was 
identified, in the famous temple in their city. The 
Tyrians replied that they were willing to obey any 
8i 



Alexander the Great 

other command of his, but would suffer neither 
Persian nor Macedonian to enter their city. If the 
King wished to sacrifice there was a more ancient 
temple of Heracles at Old Tyre. Alexander then 
knew that he must attack the island, even if it 
proved difficult as the Labours of Heracles. Its 
capture would mean the possession of the celebrated 
Phoenician navy for war purposes, the absolute 
sovereignty of the sea, Macedonia and Greece safe 
behind him, and the easy conquest of Egypt. 

The siege of Tyre is the most interesting in the 
history of classical warfare, and illustrates the 
courage, inventiveness, patience and good-fortune 
which are so equally mixed in Alexander's life. He 
could not match the fleet of Tyre, 'rich in ships,' 
and, in order to conquer the city by land, set about 
to destroy its island condition, starting the con- 
struction of a mole two hundred feet broad from the 
mainland to the island. The strait, about half a 
mile wide, was shallow near the mainland but about 
three fathoms deep near the island, and the current 
at the point where Alexander commenced the mole 
bade him defiance. Abundant timber for the work 
was found on the mountains of Lebanon, stone was 
obtained from Old Tyre, and these, heaped high as 
a mountain on the shore, were thrown down into the 
sea in alternate layers, stakes fixed in the mud of 
the channel holding the pier together. As long as 
the masons worked at a distance from the island all 
went fairly well, but when they came into deeper 
water and at the same time approached the city, 
they suffered severely under missiles from the walls. 
Then, too, the Tyrian triremes kept sailing up and 
82 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

attacking the workmen, clothed for work, not for 
war. Two wooden towers were erected on the mole 
and protected from the fire-bearing missiles of the 
enemy by specially prepared hides, which were also 
placed where they might screen the workers. From 
these towers missiles were hurled at the Tyrian ships. 
In reply, the Tyrians filled a vessel with dry fuel, 
chaff and torches, pitch and brimstone. They fixed 
two masts on the prow and stretched on each a double 
yard-arm, from which they hung caldrons of com- 
bustibles. Triremes towed the heavily laden vessel 
toward the mole and towers, and sailors threw fire 
from the vessel among the wood, at the same time 
running her aground as violently as possible, and 
dashing her against the end of the mole. If skill 
and heroism could have saved Tyre she would not 
have been wiped off the face of the earth. As her 
crew swam away, a great flame caught Alexander's 
towers and burned those within them to death. The 
triremes hovered near and discharged showers of 
missiles on those who leaped down into the sea, or 
those who approached to extinguish the flames, 
while fresh detachments from the city sailed out 
and did as much damage as they could to the mole 
and the engines of war. A storm aided the Tyrians 
in their work of destruction. 

Alexander had then to start his work afresh, and 
did so with dogged perseverance. The new mole 
was to have a wider base, contain more towers and 
be in a direction better adjusted to the storms on 
this coast. How many years might have been con- 
sumed by the Macedonians in this way we cannot 
say, but a piece of great good fortune now befell 
83 



Alexander the Great 

them. The sister cities of Tyre, not content with 
giving her no aid, as they had submitted for the 
most part to Alexander, now sent him their ships, 
while the kings of Cyprus, an abode of the Hittites, 
whose history is so much interesting the learned 
world to-day, sent him one hundred and twenty 
vessels to Sidon. With these he could blockade 
Tyre. At the head of a magnificent fleet he sailed 
from Sidon ready for his first naval battle. The 
Tyrians had been anxious to fight Alexander at sea, 
but drew back when they found to their dismay that 
he had obtained all the ships of Cyprus and Phoenicia. 
The city had two harbours, one, the Sidonian, on the 
north, looking toward Sidon, the other, the Egyptian, 
on the south, and these were now filled with Tyrian 
triremes in battle array. 

Alexander placed the Cyprian ships outside the Si- 
donian harbour, the Phoenician outside the Egyptian 
harbour, and himself took up his position near his 
mole. His artillery was turned on from the towers, 
and the Tyrians answered from towers constructed 
on their battlements to face the mole. The city 
walls were about 150 feet high and of great breadth, 
and it was not easy for ships or horses to convey 
battering-engines near enough to make a breach, 
as large stones were cast down by the besieged. 
Alexander stationed ships to seize these stones and 
convey them by means of cranes into deep water, but 
Tyrian divers cut the cables and made anchoring 
impossible. Red-hot brass shields full of burning 
sand and boiling filth were thrown on their heads, but 
at last the besiegers got close enough to batter down 
the wall, and the besieged, in the last straits, deter- 
84 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

mined to make a surprise sortie from the Sidonian 
harbour. In their despair they even thought of 
making human sacrifice to the gods. At about 
midday, when the Macedonian sailors were scattered 
in quest of necessaries and Alexander usually retired 
to his tent, a few Tyrian vessels, with picked rowers 
and fighters, sailed out quietly in single file and 
attacked the Cyprian fleet. 

It happened, however, that Alexander on that 
particular day did not stay in his tent. He saw the 
Tyrian ships sail out, and hastily manned a few 
vessels, with which, before the rest were ready, he 
sailed right round the island to the rescue. The 
Tyrians sought to fly back into harbour, but the 
King forced them to an engagement and disabled 
most of their vessels. He then sailed round the city 
walls testing every part, for he had not been able to 
shake the wall opposite the mole, and found a weak 
portion on the south side. A breach was made and 
Alexander tried to throw a bridge over, but was 
beaten back. On the third day following he made 
attacks on all sides to distract the enemy; breaches 
were opened, bridges thrown on to the broken wall, 
and, Alexander among the foremost to mount, the 
wall was scaled. Admetus, the first to ascend, was 
struck dead with a spear as he stood cheering, and 
the citizens disputed every inch of the way with the 
enemy. Advancing along the battlements, Alexan- 
der descended to the royal palace. Meanwhile the 
Phoenician and Cyprian fleets had forced their re- 
spective ways into the two harbours and captured 
the Tyrian fleet. The Tyrians for some time hurled 
stones from the roofs of their houses down on the 
85 



Alexander the Great 

Macedonians, and made a last stand at the fane of 
Agenor, father of Cadmus, the legendary founder of 
Tyre and Sidon as of Grecian Thebes. Eight thou- 
sand were slain, the rest, about 30,000, sold into 
slavery. Massacre commonly followed conquest in 
the East then as it does to-day, but Alexander was in 
so blood-thirsty a mood that his own soldiers were re- 
volted. Thus fell Tyre, after a seven months' siege, 
at the end of July or beginning of August 332 B.C. 

The coast regions of Palestine submitted, with the 
exception of Gaza, which the eunuch Batis had forti- 
fied and considered stronger than Tyre. It was the 
last city met with by the traveller going from Phoenicia 
to Egypt, at the parting of *the desert and the 
sown,' and stood on a lofty mound surrounded by a 
strong wall. Alexander, expert now in sieges, at- 
tacked the foundations of this town, built upon the 
sand, and caused a counter-mound to be constructed; 
on this the artillery used at Tyre was placed, and 
after a two months' siege this city also fell. The in- 
habitants stood fighting for long after the Macedonian 
army had entered, as they knew from the fate of the 
Tyrians what alternative to death there was for them 
to choose, and nearly 10,000 were slain. Their 
women and children were then sold into slavery by 
the conqueror. These terrible examples made other 
cities chary of bidding Alexander defiance, and were 
t heref ore necessary to his conquests, but as Alexander's 
gigantic plans unfold he seems to get farther and 
farther away from normal human nature. At Gaza 
he appears to have shown barbarous cruelty, perhaps 
partly on account of the two wounds he had received 
during the siege. Tyre rose again to greatness in 
86 




THE SIEGE OP GAZA 



Conquest of Syria and Phoenicia 

Roman times, but Gaza, which Alexander used as a 
frontier fortress, was then still desolate. If, how- 
ever, Alexander was to conquer the Persian Empire, 
and we do not know at this day the weight of his 
reasons for doing so, these deeds of cruelty were 
mercy, for numbers of cities that would have fought 
for Persia now peacefully submitted. Even his 
treatment of Batis (if true) may have been calculated. 
It depended on the satrap of Egypt as to whether 
that province should be organized to resist Alexander 
or be delivered over to him without a blow being 
struck. When Mazaces heard of the barbarous 
treatment suffered by the commander at Gaza, he 
probably laid aside any ideas he had entertained of 
resistance. 



87 



CHAPTER VII: Alexander 
in Egypt (3 32-331 b.c.) 

DARIUS had sent again to Alexander, offer- 
ing to divide his empire with him and sug- 
gesting the Euphrates as the boundary. 
Alexander must return his royal captives, and should 
receive 10,000 talents (over £2,000,000) and the hand 
of the daughter of Darius. Parmenio ventured to 
say: 

"I should close with those terms if I were Alex- 
ander." 

He received the scornful answer: 
"And so should I if I were Parmenio." 
None of his followers had the slightest suspicion 
that Alexander was burning to push on to the world's 
end, over Media, Hyrcania, Bactria, Sogdiana, 
the Hindu Kush and India to the Ocean. He sent 
answer to Darius that he could not offer what no 
longer belonged to him, and prepared to leave Syria. 
Before he went he organized Syria and Phoenicia as 
he had done Asia Minor, leaving Parmenio to ad- 
minister Syria until his return. Greece was plunged 
in despair at the news of the battle of Issus, and vari- 
ous Lacedemonians, Thebans and Athenians who had 
joined the Persians and were captured at Damascus, 
were in great fear, but were treated with great 
mildness, the Thebans being at once liberated. The 
conqueror was glad of this chance of clemency toward 
men who, through his action, were without a city. 

From the immense treasure taken at Damascus, 
the Macedonians tasted their first of the sweets of 
Asiatic luxury, and they were already dreaming of 
88 



Alexander in Egypt 

the delights of sacking Susa and Babylon. For 
those who survived the prize seemed indeed worth 
it; they Httle dreamed that in the few short years 
they were to spend in obtaining wealth, the strength 
of manhood would become exhausted in their 
veins, that most of their veterans would have fallen 
by the way, and their young men become old men 
through their superhuman exertions; and it was a 
paltry pittance that in the end those who survived 
were to take back to Macedonia. 

From 615 B.C. until this day the immemorial 
civihzation of Egypt has been under the control of 
foreign powers, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Turk, 
and Briton, and from its position and fertility it has 
always proved a valuable possession to its owner, 
although from ^'l^ B.C. until this day religious 
questions have always cheated difficulties between 
governor and governed. Difficult as it is now for Bri- 
tain to administer a country largely Mohammedan, 
it was just as difficult for Persia to keep order two 
and a half millenniums ago among a populace who 
worshipped Isis and Osiris. It was Persia's best 
milch-cow, but she had been foolish enough to treat 
the native deities with scorn. Hence beneath out- 
ward calm, Egypt was seething with insurrec- 
tion, and Alexander appeared almost as a liberator. 
The satrap had heard the news of Issus, the head- 
long flight of Darius, and the submission or sack of 
the cities of Syria and Phoenicia, and, no doubt fear- 
ing lest he should meet with a fate similar to that of 
Batis at Gaza, he surrendered Egypt to the King as 
soon as he appeared upon the frontier. Alexander 
had ridden by land with his army, while the fleet 
89 



y^ 



Alexander the Great 

sailed to Pelusium. He garrisoned Pelusium and 
sent the fleet up the Nile to the capital, Memphis, 
then a fair and flourishing city, the rival of Babylon 
and Susa, fourteen miles south of the site of the 
present Cairo. After a journey across the desert to 
take Heliopolis, the sacred city of the Sun, Alexander, 
too, went to Memphis, where he pleased the natives 
by sacrificing to Ptah and Apis. The Greek gods 
were gratified by games and a musical festival, to 
which famous athletes and artists came from Greece 
at the King's summons. He did not stay long 
among the glories of Memphis, but set about one 
of those enormous practical projects which prove him 
as much ruler as conqueror. 

Among the Persian treasures taken after Issus 
was an extremely rich casket, in which Alexander 
had decided that nothing less precious than his copy 
of Homer's Iliad might be kept. Homer, pleased 
with this little attention, proved, as Plutarch says, 
*' neither an idle nor unprofitable companion to him." 
A grey-headed old man appeared one night in a 
vision and recited to him this verse from the 
Odyssey: 

An island lies where loud the billows roar. 
Pharos they call it on the Egyptian shore. 

Alexander had decided to settle a Greek colony 
in Egypt, and had for some time been pondering 
where it should be. This dream, he said, resolved 
his doubts. Pharos, where the Ptolemies afterward 
built the famous lighthouse which became one of 
the Seven Wonders of the world in the place of the 
great wall of Babylon destroyed long before, was to be. 
90 



Alexander in Egypt 

the site of the new city of Alexandria. Alexander 
had foreseen that a new port on the Mediterranean 
might grow up to take the place from which Tyre 
had fallen, and therefore he placed the Greek city, 
which he built to hold down Egypt, upon the coast. 
He chose Pharos, then an island, now an isthmus, 
as the most easterly point at which it was practicable 
to build a sea-port, it being just out of reach of the 
heavy deposits from the mouths of the Nile. As 
Pharos was seen to be too small he founded his city, 
in 331 B.C., on the mainland opposite, where the town 
of Alexandria stands to-day, between Lake Mareotis 
and the sea. The King led the way, and one follow- 
ing him scattered barley as he went, to mark the 
boundaries. A flock of birds carried away these 
grains, and Aristander, who attended Alexander 
wherever he went as soothsayer foretold from the 
omen that strangers would flock to the new city and 
that it would nourish many countries. Alexander 
himseK marked out the site of the market-place and 
temples, and appointed the gods to whom the temples 
were to be dedicated. 

Until the foundation of Cairo in the tenth century, 
and, to a large extent, until the discovery of the route 
to India by the Cape of Good Hope inl498, Alexandria 
was the greatest trading city of the world. Until 
Egypt became a Roman province in the first century 
B.C. it had also enormous political importance. It 
was the capital of the Ptolemies until Cleopatra came 
to her end, and was known for subtlety, refinement, 
gaiety and vice more strangely mixed than in Rome 
in the days of Nero or France under the last Valois. 
The residence there of the Ptolemies also made 
91 



Alexander the Great 

Alexandria the capital of Greek culture, and so it 
remained until the conquest of Egypt by Moham- 
medans in the seventh century a.d. The Egyptian 
climate was peculiarly suited to the preservation of 
antiquities, and it would be difficult to estimate the 
world's debt to Egypt for the preservation of manu- 
script copies of the Greek classics, even as the earliest 
Greek paintings saved to us are those of mummy 
faces in Egyptian tombs. We should know much less 
of the Greeks had Alexander not conquered Egypt. 
After the rule of the Ptolemies had long passed 
away, Alexandria was the stage for many important 
events in the early development of Christianity. 
Here they sought to break St Katharine on the 
wheel; here Arianism raged; and here the learned 
Hypatia suffered death at the hands of the Chris- 
tian mob. Alexandria was to be associated with 
ends which Alexander could not have foreseen, but 
its founding was a great conception, and its success 
points to the sagacity of the founder. 

His city rising, Alexander left Cleomenes in charge, 
but one important act remained to be done in Egypt. 
The ancient Pharaohs had been 'Sons of Ammon,' 
and Alexander wished to conciliate the natives of 
what would be his second richest province by becom- 
ing a *Son of Ammon' in his turn. This act of 
affiliation was never understood, and created almost 
as great a scandal as if an English administrator 
of Egypt to-day should turn Mohammedan. The 
motive which modern minds ascribe to the King was 
never gues&ed at by the men of his time. There was 
a deep mental chasm between this commander and 
his soldiery, and even between him and his generals, 
92 



Alexander in Egypt 

and they believed in their ignorance that he wished 
to set himself above ordinary humanity. In the 
only serious revolt which Alexander ever had to face, 
the army bade him go and conquer with his father 
Ammon. Alexander never explained the motives of 
his actions; he was always right, and he insisted on 
unquestioning obedience, and therefore he left the 
Macedonians in their ignorance, an ignorance at 
which he could hardly complain, for it served him 
better than if his followers had known his aims; even 
a pretence to deity brought with it some political 
advantage. But once when he was wounded he said 
to some of his intimate friends, "This, my friends, 
is real flowing blood, not ichor, 

'Such as immortal gods are wont to shed.'" 

The oracle of Ammon in the Oasis of Siwah was 
one of the most famous in the ancient world. Perseus 
and Heracles had both visited it in their adventurous 
careers, and Alexander imitated them. He advanced 
from Alexandria along the desert tract by the coast 
for about 180 miles, to Parsetonium, where he re- 
ceived the submission of Cyrene. Then he turned 
inland. The way lay south over burning, shifting 
sands, with never a tree or a hill for a land-mark, and 
where neither rain fell nor dew. When Cambyses led 
his army that way, it was said, the whole desert rose 
like a sea, and 50,000 were swallowed up in the sands. 
On the third day water fell short, but miracles, even 
the best authorities say, befell the Macedonians. 
Rain fell; ravens or snakes (there are different 
accounts) appeared and led the way, and the party 
arrived at the Oasis of Ammon. In this delightful 
93 



Alexander the Great 

spot of palm and fountain, the King sought the 
oracle, and obtained from him the confirmation of 
his sacred status as an Egyptian sovereign. He told 
his followers that the oracle had told him many im- 
portant things that he could not divulge, and gave 
them permission to question it in their turn. The 
state of their minds may be guessed from the fact 
that one and all asked the priest if Alexander were 
really of divine origin, and were one and all informed 
that they were to treat him as Son of Ammon. Some 
words which Alexander is reported to have let fall are 
the best commentary on this episode. God, he said, 
was the common father of us all, but more particularly 
of the best of us. It was from this time that some of 
the Macedonians dated Alexander's unbearable lord- 
liness. Ready as they were to honour the repre- 
sentative of the tribe in all due and accustomed ways, 
they were fiercely opposed to any assumption on his 
part of oriental monarchical manners. The Greek 
was unhappy in the service of a despot, and their 
young king was becoming a despot. Some, however, 
think that this change only came after Susa and 
Persepolis fell into his hands and the Great King had 
died a miserable death in an abject flight before him. 
The Macedonian nobles, whom Alexander was raising 
up to be rulers of mighty provinces as he went on, 
were many of them to feel with the nurse in Medea: 

Rude are the wills of princes: yea 
Prevailing alway, seldom crossed. 
On fitful winds their moods are tossed: 
'Tis best men tread the equal way. 

Aye, not with glory but with peace 
May the long summers find me crowned: 

94 



Alexander in Egypt 

For gentleness — her very sound 
Is magic, and her usages 

All wholesome: but the fiercely great 
Hath little music on his road. 
And falleth, when the hand of God 
Shall move, most deep and desolate. 

The Son of Ammon returned from the oasis to 
Memphis, where he assumed the pschent of Pharaoh. 
Ambassadors of the Greek states, who had sent a 
golden crown to the conqueror after Issus, had come 
to seek favours, and recruits sent by Antipater 
arrived. In Egypt Alexander established a govern- 
ment of divided command, not being willing to 
entrust this rich province to a single person; the 
Romans followed Alexander's policy in this, never 
sending any man of proconsular rank to administer 
Egypt, their 'granary.' 

In the spring of 331 B.C. the King left Egypt and 
marched back into Phoenicia. At Tyre his fleet 
met him, and great celebrations and games were 
again held. Here at last he granted the Athenians' 
request f or'the release of their fellow-citizens. Several 
honours were bestowed, and Ptolemy, who was after- 
ward to rule over Egypt, became at this time one of 
the chief body-guards. Then the King struck into 
the interior for his final struggle with Persia. 



95 



CHAPTER VIII: The Con^ 
quest of Persia (331-330 b.c.) 



IN June or July of 331 B.C., after an eleven 
march, Alexander arrived at Thapsacus on the 
Euphrates. Darius had assembled an army 
half as large again as his former vast force. Wild 
Bactrians, Scythians, Indians, Syrians, Cappadocians 
and other far-away peoples had flocked across moun- 
tain, desert and river to Babylon at the summons of 
the Great King, and a million foot-soldiers and forty 
thousand horse-soldiers filled the plain of Mesopo- 
tamia. When he heard of Alexander's approach 
Darius sent the brave Mazaeus to prevent him from 
crossing the Euphrates, and to ravage the country so 
that the Macedonians could not proceed by thp 
direct route to Babylon, a way it was also improb- 
able that they would take on account of the heat. He 
himself passed with his army over the Tigris and 
sought for a favourable battle-field. This he found 
at Gaugamela, a village on the River Bumodus (now 
the Ghazir), near the city of Arbela (Erbil), famous 
in history as the place where he and Alexander 
fought their last fight for the possession of Asia. The 
battle (1st October 331 B.C.) is often called Arbela, 
but more correctly Gaugamela. The scene was a 
vast plain, unbroken by tree or ravine, and Darius, 
remembering Issus, levelled to the ground any slight 
eminences. 

Alexander had sent a force to make a bridge over 

the Euphrates. It was not quite completed on 

account of Mazaeus' presence on the other side, but 

at the appearance of Alexander, Mazaeus and his 

96 



The Conquest of Persia 

3000 cavalry fled. Alexander passed over, and, after 
a few days' rest, hastened across Mesopotamia, 
reduced by Mazaeus to a wilderness of fire and ashes, 
to the Tigris (Dijleh), the 'great river' of the East, 
known to the Hebrews and Persians as *the Arrow' 
on account of its swiftness. Nineveh, long in ruins, 
stood on its banks, and, centuries later, Bagdad was 
to rise lower down the stream. There was no one 
to resist the Macedonians' crossing, but they had 
great difficulty in finding a ford, and then the water 
was so deep as to reach to the horses' heads, and the 
current so strong that horse and rider were nearly 
swept away, while their packages were whirled down 
the stream. It was a hard moment for the men 
when they saw their cherished booty diminishing 
on the racing river and disappearing in its waters. 
Alexander led the infantry at this critical moment, 
and motioned in a manner that there was no disobey- 
ing for them to hold their armour above their heads 
and let all else go, pointing out the route with his hand 
as his voice could not carry over the whole force. 
*Menelaus of the Loud War Cry' would have been 
useful at this crisis. Had Darius appeared, one won- 
ders what would have become of the Macedonian army. 
The soldiers seem to have felt very dismal after 
their crossing, and as an eclipse of the moon followed 
(20th September 331 B.C.), they were entirely dis- 
heartened. Alexander, to cheer them, offered sacri- 
fices to the Sun, the Moon, and to the Earth, whose 
doing it was, and the omens in the sacrifices were 
declared to be most propitious. The real cause of 
the eclipse was known to the King, who had carried 
away some Egyptian astrologers, the astronomers 
97 



Alexander the Great 

of the time, in his train; but he did not attempt to 
explain the phenomenon to the crowd, who would 
probably have thought the explanation impious. 
The army then turned south toward Babylon, with 
the Tigris on the right hand side. As it proceeded 
toward the plain of Gaugamela, the wife of Darius, 
a delicately-bred woman little fitted for these hard 
journeys, died, and the sorrow of the conqueror and 
the splendid funeral he gave her can hardly have been 
of much comfort to old Sisygambis and the high- 
spirited Persian children who were now eating the 
bitter bread of captivity. A eunuch escaped to make 
the heart of Darius still heavier by telling him the 
news. 

A panic, of which the cause has never been dis- 
covered, seized the Macedonian army at this point, 
and Alexander was forced to give the soldiers time 
for rest, and exercise all his wits to restore their 
courage. At last he succeeded, and the camp was 
broken up. Mazaeus, who watched them from a 
neighbouring height, fled at their approach to warn 
Darius; and the Macedonians, occupying the summit 
he had left, looked eagerly out to see the Persian 
army congregated in the plain below A thick mist 
at first hid the immense multitude, but its noise 
filled their ears, and even the royal heart of Alexander 
misgave him. Then the mist cleared and the myriads 
of the enemy came clearly into view, and, miracu- 
lously enough, as the soldiers of the Iliad would have 
thought, Ares himself, 'bane of mortals,' filled 
every Macedonian heart with longing for battle. 
The Macedonians gave great shouts, which the 
Persian host returned, until the distant forests and 
98 



The Conquest of Persia 

mountains re-echoed with horrible war-cries, the 
neighing of battle-steeds and the clanging of armour. 
At this crisis of his life Alexander appears to have 
hesitated for the first time as to his course of action. 
He expressed himself as doubtful in the council of 
generals, and took Parmenio's advice as to recon- 
noitring the ground to see if the enemy had laid any 
traps. Parmenio said boldly that a fight by day- 
fight was out of the question; the soldiers must 
not be terrified by the view of the numbers of the 
enemy. They had faced the Great King at Issus, 
but the Great King could not deploy his forces in 
a mountain defile; here he could surround the 
Macedonians at his ease; the Macedonians must 
take him by surprise at night. Nearly all the generals 
applauded, but the King replied with what seemed 
childish folly to these old men who did not yet know 
his depth. He had probably learned through his 
excellent intelligence department that Darius ex- 
pected a night attack, and that morning would find 
him weary with watching. Secondly, a night attack 
was a risky thing: who knew what panic might not 
fall on his own troops fighting the strange tribes of the 
East by the wild light of the camp-fires, and in a 
district which the enemy knew far better than they "i 
Lastly, the moral effect of a victory in the light of 
day would be infinitely greater than that of a stolen 
victory. It was with all this weight behind his 
words that Alexander answered in the grand manner: 
*'I steal no victory!" 

The generals shrugged their shoulders, but the 
King's laconism roused a better fighting spirit than 
any amount of unfolding of policy would have done. 



Alexander the Great 

Thus, while the Persian army kept vigil in the 
plain, shining afar with lights and fires, Darius and 
his officers going from watch to watch to see that 
all was well and invoking the aid of Ormuzd, the 
Macedonian soldiers were ordered to repose. Ari- 
stander and the King sacrificed to Zeus, Athena, and 
Victory, and Alexander was some time before he 
could compose his mind to slumber, but he finally 
sank into a profound sleep. His generals came at 
sunrise to receive their orders, and were surprised to 
find sleeping him who generally roused the camp. 
They even suspected that he desired to avoid the 
combat, and depression fell on all. At last Parmenio 
was forced to wake him, and even reproached his 
master. Alexander, however, rose fresh as the 
morn. He explained his deep sleep by his freedom 
from care now that he had no longer to chase Darius. 
Calling for his cuirass, which he only bore in im- 
portant engagements, he soon appeared at the head 
of his army, and never had his face so shone with 
gaiety. The scythed chariots seemed from a dis- 
tance to be the most formidable part of the Great 
King's preparations, and Alexander prescribed similar 
tactics to those employed against the barbarians' 
wagons four years before in the Shipka Pass. When 
the chariots, drawn by swift war-steeds, wheeled in 
among their ranks, the soldiers were to open if 
possible and let them pass through; if not possible 
they were to frighten the horses by their cries and 
stop their advance with flights of arrows. The 
Indians had furnished Darius with about fifteen 
elephants, now first heard of in the history of war- 
fare; "not only were these mighty beasts formidable 



The Conquest of Persia 

combatants, but their smell caused such terror to 
horses that they were much used against cavalry. 
The Macedonian line was extended to the utmost, so 
as to prevent out-flanking, and a special force was 
placed in the rear to guard against that great danger. 
Alexander's army numbered about 40,000 infantry 
and 7000 cavalry. As usual he commanded the 
right wing, where were the cavalry Companions under 
Clitus, Parmenio the left with the cavalry of the 
Thessahans and Greek alHes, while the phalanx was 
in the centre, with the archers on the wings and 
in the second array in the rear. Darius sat on a 
raised seat in his chariot in the centre of the army, 
according to the Persian custom. Round him were 
his * Kinsmen' and the Persian Guards, carrying 
spears with golden apples at the butt end, Indians, 
Albaiiians, Carians, and Mardian archers. Beyond 
them stretched TJxians, Babylonians, Sitacenians, 
Armenians, Cappadocians, and Greek mercenaries, 
the Greeks this time stationed in the van, in two 
divisions, one on each side of Darius and the Per- 
sian contingent. 

For once Alexander had no stream to cross before 
the enemy's eyes. After his inspection of the force 
opposite him, he moved to the right, and the Persians 
followed, moving to their left. The King con- 
tinued this manoeuvre until Darius had been nearly 
drawn away from his prepared battle-field, and ad- 
vanced cavalry to prevent Alexander moving farther. 
A general cavalry engagement followed, in which the 
Macedonians suffered severely from the Scythians, 
but at last broke the enemy's line. Meanwhile the 
chariots had been directed against the phalanx, and 
for a while their scythes mowed down and mutilated 



Alexander the Great 

the Macedonians. The Macedonians in some cases 
seized the horses, while their archers directed fatal 
showers of missiles against steeds and charioteers, 
but also succeeded, as they had been ordered, in 
opening their ranks and letting these Eastern engines 
of war roll through to be thereupon overpowered in 
the rear. The much-feared Persian chariot did a 
negligible amount of damage. Parmenio, with char- 
acteristic fussiness, sent to inform Alexander that his 
baggage was in danger, and Alexander impatiently 
replied, "Tell Parmenio that if we conquer we shall 
recover our possessions and seize the enemy's. No 
one must be taken from the battle for this purpose; 
and bid him forget such unworthy things and fight 
as becomes so distinguished a Macedonian soldier. '* 
The Persians, therefore, were left with a free hand 
at the baggage, slew the guards and set the prisoners 
free. They found Sisygambis, to whom they an- 
nounced the joyful news that Darius had won a great 
victory. They failed, however, to deceive the old 
woman or in any way to rouse her. She listened in 
silence with immobile countenance, and refused to 
leave the Macedonian camp. Perhaps some instinct 
of the horrible fate awaiting the last of the royal 
house of the Achsemenids may have possessed her. 
When Alexander had at last made a break in the 
front line of the Persians, he formed a wedge of the 
Companion cavalry and the bristling phalanx and 
led it into the gap. The charioteer of Darius was 
slain, and the battle became a carnage. Alexander 
had tired out several horses and was fighting like 
Heracles, smiting down those who resisted him and 
those who turned their backs to flv. Darius himself 



The Conquest of Persia 

fled with the first, this time in clear cowardice, as 
he left the way to Babylon open to the invader. 
The great majority of his host followed him, hidden 
in the cloud of dust they raised; by the shouting 
and cracking of whips alone could the Macedonians 
tell which way the Great King's guard had passed. 
A far more pitiable fate awaited Darius than death 
upon the field. Parmenio vexed Alexander again 
by sending for aid just when the King was anxious 
to follow after Darius, for much would have been 
spared the army if this had been the end of the 
chase. Mazseus, on the Persian right wing, had been 
threatening the Thessalian cavalry with destruction, 
but lost hope and fell back when he saw the flight of 
Darius. The spirits of the Thessalian cavalry revived 
and they were eager to pursue, but Parmenio re- 
strained them, and Mazseus escaped with a few of his 
men to Babylon. Alexander appeared in time to slay 
the greater number in the hottest engagement of the 
day. While Parmenio took possession of the Persian 
camp, Alexander advanced to theriverLycus (now the 
Great Zab), a tributary of the Tigris, through the mul- 
titude of the dead and the wounded abandoned in the 
flight. The losses of Darius were estimated at 300,000. 
After allowing his men to rest until midnight Alex- 
ander made a forced march to Arbela, 69 miles from 
the battle-field, and here, though he captured the 
treasure of Darius, with his chariot, spear and bow, 
he did not succeed in finding the Great King. The 
Macedonians were soon driven away from this neigh- 
bourhood by the smell from the battle-field, where 
vultures and dogs were disposing of the Persian slain. 
Darius fled neither to Babylon nor Susa, but 
103 



Alexander the Great 

northward through the mountains of Armenia to 
Media, there hoping to gather a fresh force. He 
meditated in the philosophical way of a Persian that 
wealth and prosperity had a corrupting effect on 
human character, and accepted his lot with the 
characteristic resignation of the East. Alexander 
did not follow: the way to Babylon was open, and 
thither he and his army eagerly advanced. Maz^eus, 
his son, and other magnates came forth to surrender 
it, and Alexander peacefully entered into the city of 
Semiramis, Bel, and Nebuchadnezzar. The Baby- 
lonians even decked his way with flowers and gar- 
lands, and made rich gifts, and Alexander here also 
was able to take up the position of liberator from the 
alien Persian. There is nothing to show that the 
yoke of Persia had been particularly hard upon her 
subject peoples; the tribute she levied was not 
heavy, and life was so good in Babylon, for instance, 
that the Jews were unwilling to return to their 
country when Cyrus ended the Captivity. Yet Persia 
was hated, and the chief reason for this, besides the 
natural love of freedom, was that Persia had never 
been polite to native deities. Alexander never 
erred in this way. He commanded the temples de- 
stroyed by Xerxes in Babylon to be rebuilt, and paid 
his respects to Bel (the Baal of Scripture), spending 
an enormous amount in the restoration of his temple, 
for which the labour of ten thousand workmen was re- 
quired. He also appointed the Persian Mazseus, as a 
reward for his submission, satrap of Babylonia. 

In Babylon Alexander kept up royal state. He 
and his army were amazed at this immense city with 
its palaces and its hundred gates. Before the Persian 
104 



The Conquest of Persia 

conquest, its wall, one of the Seven Wonders of the 
World, had enclosed an area four times the extent 
of London, and was three hundred feet high, with 
lofty towers rising still higher all round its circum- 
ference, and, we aie told, twenty-eight yards wide. 
This wall had gone, apparently pulled down by the 
Persian conquerors, but there still remained the 
inner wall, itself of remarkable loftiness and of such 
width that on the top, among the towers which rose 
all round it, the picturesque quadrigae of the ancients 
could pass each other. The swift Euphrates ran 
between pleasant embankments through the city, 
the two parts of which were united by a bridge 
accounted a miracle of engineering skill; and above 
Ihe river, round an ancient palace, rose the famous 
Hanging Gardens of Semiramis. In this city, 
adorned by the old Babylonian kings with so many 
marvels, the Macedonian soldiers who had conquered 
all Asia rested from their labours and took their 
pleasure, the fearful inhabitants eager to gratify 
their least whim, and Alexander anxious to let them 
see that so much fighting and weariness was worth 
while. Five weeks were spent in this way while 
he was waiting for the arrival of fresh troops. Then 
he made a twenty days' march to the capital, Susa 
(the Shushan of the Book of Esther), on the river 
Choaspes, a stream famous for its sweet water. 
Here he found the principal Persian treasure-house, 
containing fifty thousand talents, a sum equivalent 
to from fifty to a hundred million dollars. Objects 
brought from Greece by Xerxes came into his 
possession, and he sat at last upon the throne of 
Darius, a proud moment for Greeks if they could 
los 



Alexander the Great 

have accepted Alexander's work. It was a bitter 
moment for loyal Persians and for the captive 
Queen-mother and royal children. Alexander, see- 
ing them droop more and more each day, recom- 
mended weaving as a distraction to Sisygambis and 
the princesses, as he remembered how much it 
occupied his mother and female relatives at home; 
but their tears fell thick and fast at this insult to 
their noble birth, and he had great difficulty in assur- 
ing them of the kindness of his intention. 

He could not consider himself free to follow 
Darius until he had visited the old centre of Persian 
power, Persepolis, the town built by Cyrus. He had 
to fight his way into Persia proper, for the passes 
which led from the plain of Mesopotamia into the 
highlands of Persia were held by the warlike Uxians, 
who would not let the Great King himself pass with- 
out payment. They hurled down missiles on the 
conqueror's army, and after he had chased them 
away he had to face Ariobarzanes, the royal satrap 
of Persis, at the head of 40,000 infantry and 700 
cavalry in the Persian Gates. Ariobarzanes had 
entrenched his men behind a wall which he had 
caused to be built across the pass, and awaited 
Alexander as the Thessalians had awaited him at 
Tempe six years before. Now, as then, Alexander 
circumvented the enemy. A Lycian prisoner, who 
had been a shepherd in these parts, led part of the 
army in the night by a forest track known only to 
the herdsman, while Craterus remained with the rest 
of the army to deceive the enemy. It was a rough, 
precipitous track; snow fell and a bitter wind stung 
the Macedonians, who began at length to doubt the 
io6 



The Conquest of Persia 

Lycian's purpose; and it was after memorable hard- 
ships that when morning dawned the httle army burst 
forth on the enemy at the head of the pass and took 
it unawares. Craterus swarmed up from the plain, 
and a terrible carnage took place on both sides. 
The King in this January of 330 B.C. received news 
that Persepolis was to be pillaged to prevent its 
wealth falling into Macedonian hands, and, leaving 
his infantry, he dashed forward with his cavalry, 
marched all night, and arrived at the Araxes at day- 
break. By the destruction of several hamlets the 
materials were obtained for a bridge, and Alexander 
hastened on. As he approached Persepolis a large 
body of captive Greeks was allowed to come out to 
meet him, and they were a sight to inspire terrible 
revenge in their fellow-countrymen's breasts. They 
were mutilated in the most horrible way, no longer 
possessing human faces, and nearly all refused 
Alexander's offer to send them back to Greece, where 
they knew they could only shock their old friends. 
They, at least, saw in Alexander an avenger sent by 
Zeus, and the King did all he could to make them 
happy in this outlying part of his empire. 

On the day following, Alexander entered the city 
from which the troops of Darius the Great and Xerxes 
had set forth to conquer Greece, and it was found 
to surpass even Babylon and Susa in the treasure it 
contained. Camels, it is said, had to be fetched 
from those places to carry away all the wealth — one 
hundred and twenty thousand talents — in the public 
treasury. Stories now utterly discredited tell us 
that for a while the King allowed free massacre and 
pillage, but Persepolis had made no opposition to 
107 



Alexander the Great 

him and even as he had to be severe where a city 
was held against him, so it would have been fatal 
to his career of conquest if he had slaughtered those 
who surrendered. The Macedonians feasted and 
revelled in Persepolis as in Babylon, and Dry den has 
described the great revel and bonfire with which 
their visit closed. At 'Alexander's Feast' the 
young King and his war-worn officers lay listening 
with varying emotions to the musician Timotheus: 

War, he sung, is toil and trouble; 
Honour but an empty bubble; 
Never ending, still beginning. 
Fighting still, and still destroying: 
If the world be worth thy winning. 
Think, O think it worth enjoying: 
Lovely Thais sits beside thee. 
Take the gifts the gods provide thee. 

Whatever the actual temper of the Macedonian 
army, never has the mood of soldiery in an hour of 
relaxation been better caught than by Dryden. 
The poet continues, much on the lines of the legend, 
that at last 'the mighty master' smote the chord 
of vengeance; the King, stirred to madness, rose and 
grasped a flambeau; Thais with a torch led the way, 
and the palace of the Kings of Persia, built of cedar 
wood, was soon flaring in the night-sky. Others 
believe that this was no outrage of the wine-cup, but 
a calculated and impressive act. The Persian inva- 
sions had been the deed of the Great Kings, not of 
their subjects, and Alexander emphasized this fact 
by the symbol he chose for destruction. He took no 
vengeance on Asia, now his own kingdom. Some- 
what sobered by their outburst of frenzy, the Mace- 
io8 




THK DEATH OF DARIUS 



The Conquest of Persia 

donlans went on their way. Their King was now the 
Great King, and it only remained to find his dispos- 
sessed rival. 

They sought him at Ecbatana, the capital of Media, 
where he had been residing since Gaugamela, but he 
had fled northward to the Caspian Gates, meaning 
to lay waste Parthia and Hyrcania and hide in 
Bactria. Alexander stayed some time in Ecbatana, 
which was the summer residence of the Persian kings. 
Its palace was adorned with capitals and entabla- 
tures of gold and silver and with silver tiles and 
wainscottings, and the city, with its strong citadel 
and seven walls, seemed to him a fitting place 
to make his treasury. Here he left the Persian 
horde, amounting to nearly half a hundred million 
pounds of Enghsh money in value, in charge of his 
childhood's friend Harpalus, who was to prove 
too weak for such a gigantic trust. The King sent 
home from Ecbatana all the soldiers of the Greek 
allies who wished to leave him, but retained, with or 
without its will, his own national levy. The dis- 
missal of the allies made no constitutional difference 
to his presidency over Hellas. Parmenio was left 
with a large portion of the army to attend to various 
affairs in Media and then march through Cadusia to 
Hyrcania, while Alexander and his force pushed on 
after Darius. He made such speed that horses and 
men fell by the way, and on the eleventh day he 
arrived at Rhagse, near Teheran, a day's march 
from the Caspian Gates, only to find that Darius had 
passed through. After five days' rest, Alexander 
left Media, now a part of his empire, and marched 
by the Caspian Gates into Parthia, a state of little 
importance in his time. As news arrived that 
109 



Alexander the Great 

the Persian nobles under Bessus, satrap of the rich 
province of Bactria, had revolted against Darius 
and put him in chains, he pressed forward at a still 
more mad rate, taking with him only the Companions 
and a few picked infantry, marching the whole night 
until noon the next day and the whole of the second 
night until he found a cold camp-fire where he had 
expected to find the Persians. He learned that the 
Greek mercenaries and a few Persians had remained 
faithful to Darius, but, powerless to protect him from 
Bessus, had left him. Despite the most fearful 
fatigue Alexander hastened on, riding all night and 
until noon next day, when he came to Thara, the 
Parthian village where Bessus had encamped the day 
before. He learned that the enemy also was fleeing 
night and day, and determined to try a short cut 
through the desert, leaving the infantry to follow by 
the route Bessus had taken. Before daybreak he came 
upon the Persians, unarmed and defenceless. Stabbing 
the hapless Darius, whom they were conveying in a 
covered carriage, Bessus and his companions left him 
and fled, and the train of pursuers passed by. His 
horses dragged the Great King away from the road- 
side,and,desertedbyeveryfriendandservant,hedied. 
There was a story of a courteous, dying message to 
Alexander delivered to the Greeks who found him. 
Alexander, when he came up, threw a cloak in pity 
over the body of this king, robbed of his purple robe 
and lying dead in the dust in a condition sad enough 
for a beggar. Like Croesus, Darius had experienced 
the utmost from the mutability of fortune, and, like 
Cyrus, Alexander showed respect to fallen greatness, 
rendering every honour to his dead rival's corpse. 



CHAPTER IX: Alexander in 
Central Asia (330-327 b.c.) 

ALEXANDER was now lord of the empires 
which had belonged to the Assyrians and 
Babylonians, Lydians, and Medes, not yet of 
the whole extent of the Persian Empire. The Persians 
had extended the Median realm over valley, desert, 
and mountain to the far-away Jaxartes, now the Sir 
Darya. To that stream Alexander also marched, 
and the reduction of this district was to take him a 
disproportionate amount of time. Having hunted 
down the Mardians in their lairs in hill and forest, 
and forced them by terrible threats to restore 
Bucephalus, which they had stolen, he advanced to 
Zadracarta, the capital of Hyrcania, situated on 
the south shore of the Caspian Sea. Here Persian 
magnates and their suites poured in to do homage to 
the new sovereign, and the Greek mercenaries, who 
had remained faithful to Darius but would not serve 
under Bessus, sent offers of surrender. Bessus, it 
appeared, had assumed the style of Great King. 
Alexander was about to enter Bactria, when news of 
Persian risings compelled him to dash southward into 
Areia and Drangiana. 

At Prophthasia, the capital of Drangiana, the grow- 
ing discontent of the army received its first reply 
from the King. A rumour that Alexander meant to 
return home had caused such joy while they were in 
Hyrcania that Alexander had been seriously alarmed, 
but his eloquent reproaches had rendered officers 
and men again anxious to follow him wherever he 
wanted to go. He, moreover, drew a picture of all 



Alexander the Great 

the newly conquered nations rising and attacking 
them if they retreated, and of Bessus becoming 
sovereign in his place. For a while the impression 
of this speech lasted, but the Macedonians had other 
causes of uneasiness, and it is said that Alexander's 
inspection of his subjects' correspondence left him 
in no doubt about their opinions of himself and his 
actions. Alexander seemed to consider the simple 
ways of the old kings of his race now unworthy of 
him, and had begun to imitate the state of the monarch 
he had dispossessed. He encouraged Macedonians 
who addressed him to prostrate themselves in the 
Asiatic way, and soon he accustomed the generals 
who had conquered so many peoples to render him 
what the Macedonians considered menial services. 
The first ruler in antiquity to lay aside distinctions 
of race to such an extent, Alexander placed Persian 
officials, whom his men thought it was leniency not 
to slay, over nearly all the provinces of Asia. Worse 
than all, he assumed on state occasions, and expected 
those about him to wear, Asiatic dress — a purple 
vest, loose scarlet trousers and a purple robe, a 
white mixture in the vest being a royal prerogative, 
as was the wearing of the tiara erect. He even used 
the seal of Darius for Asiatic business. To men of a 
later age these seem the deeds of one who was both a 
statesman and a cosmopolitan born out of his time; 
but the Greeks so despised the Asiatics that they 
were outraged and scandalized. The old soldiers 
cried out that they had lost more than they had 
gained by their victories, since they were turned into 
slaves. Also tales are told of terrible debauches by 
which Alexander saddened the Macedonian soldiery. 



Alexander in Central Asia 

and the readiness of Asiatic royalties to take life 
seemed to have come to him with the garb they had 
worn. Now, at Prophthasia, a plot was formed 
against his Hfe, and led to the execution of Philotas, 
son of Parmenio, who was worshipped by the army. 
Brave, tireless and munificent, the common soldiery 
had probably adored him all the more for his haughti- 
ness, but he had become hated among his equals, and 
his father had once said to him, "My son, to be not 
quite so great would be better." He had once 
spoken presumptuously to the King, who had never 
forgiven it: Alexander had questioned him as to 
what the oracle at Siwah had said to him, and hav- 
ing, like everybody else, questioned the priest as to 
Alexander's deity, he replied that Zeus was sorry for 
men who had to obey one who considered himself 
more than a man. When a young officer, who had 
got to know of the plot, went to the royal tent to in- 
form the King, Philotas came out, and the young 
man thought it quite sufficient to warn this great 
officer. Was not Parmenio the King's chief general, 
and had not his other sons. Hector and Nicanor, died 
in the royal service? Philotas commended him and 
re-entered the tent, where he conversed alone with the 
King for a long time, but mentioned no word of the 
conspiracy. The young officer waited for a day or 
two, and then informed some other courtier, and the 
news was at once carried to the King, together with 
the story of Philotas' suspicious conduct. Alexander 
wept bitterly, and after an interview with Philotas, 
summoned a council to which Philotas was not 
admitted. Craterus, to whom Alexander gave his 
chief trust, took up the brief against Philotas and 
"3 



Alexander the Great 

urged his death. On the following day the soldiers 
were assembled as a court-martial, for in peace the 
Macedonian people had the right to try Macedonians 
in capital cases, and in war this power belonged to 
the army. The King disclosed the plot against his 
life, and his auditors listened in tears and anger, and 
when he told them that Parmenio was at its head and 
Philotas was its chief instrument, a great murmur of 
indignation rose. When, however, depositions were 
taken and Philotas appeared in no way incriminated, 
silence succeeded to the murmuring. Philotas was 
brought forward in bonds, and Alexander left the 
court. Having determined on his death, he did 
not wish to hear his justification of himself. The 
strongest point in Philotas' defence was that he and 
Parmenio had before carried such information to the 
King, as in the case of their suspicion of Philip, and 
been mocked for their pains. The enemies of Philo- 
tas were busy haranguing the crowd, this impression- 
able crowd of uneducated soldiers, and at last the 
old soldiers of this famous cavalry general called 
for his blood. Hephaestion, Craterus, and Coenus, 
who were all to rise on the ruins of the house of 
Parmenio, superintended his torture, and for long 
neither groan nor confession was wrung from him, 
but in the end he cried out that he and Parmenio 
had been maturing a plot against Alexander ever 
since they left Egypt. He was utterly broken down 
by the torture, and Alexander, concealed behind a 
tapestry hanging, called forth in his wrath, "Are 
you so mean-spirited and effeminate, Philotas, and 
yet can engage in so desperate a design?" He 
and all the others convicted by the depositions 
114 



Alexander in Central Asia 

were then slain by the Macedonians with their 
javehns. 

After Philotas was dead, the army had a reaction. 
They remembered the debt of gratitude which 
Alexander owed to the aged Parmenio, who had now 
lost all his sons. The King, however, sealed and 
dispatched Parmenio's death-warrant. He must 
surely have been convinced of Parmenio's guilt, for 
he was wise enough to know that a faithful servant 
of Parmenio's gifts was priceless. He may, however, 
have feared from Parmenio effectual opposition to 
his wider plans, as he appears to have snatched at 
the opportunity of getting rid of him. It is difficult 
to believe that he was simply wrought upon by the 
enemies and rivals of this house. When the head 
of Parmenio was brought into the camp, a commotion 
in the army was with difficulty repressed. The deed 
was a milestone in Alexander's career; not only did 
the nations tremble at his name, but his own people 
became fearful under the King's eye. He adopted 
Persian methods of mutilating captives of a certain 
degree of guilt, and his frown, like those of sultans 
gone and sultans to come,' spelt death. From this 
time we may picture him in his Oriental costume, like 
some caliph of Eastern story. 

Hephsestion and the King's foster-uncle, Clitus, 
received joint command of the Companion cavalry, 
over which Philotas had been sole ruler, and Ptolemy 
took the place of another fallen suspect, Demetrius, 
in the body-guards. Alexander appointed a governor 
of Gedrosia (Baluchistan) in the South, and in the 
spring of 329 B.C. marched, fighting, through Southern 
Afghanistan (Arachosia). He founded a city of 
IIS 



Alexander the Great 

Alexandria in 'this province. Physical features have 
so changed in Afghanistan and India that it ;s in 
vain, to try and identify most of the places mentioned 
in Alexander's story, but this Alexandria may have 
been corrupted into Kandahar. The Hindu-Kush 
was known to the ancients as the Paropanisus, the 
Himalayas as the Imaus, and, with the Pamirs, the 
whole system was called the Indian Caucasus, associ- 
ated in Greek legend with the sufferings of Prome- 
theus and the childhood of Dionysus. At the foot of 
the Hindu-Kush Alexander founded another city of 
Alexandria. In the spring of 328 B.C. he led his army 
over the heights of the Hindu-Kush, possibly by the 
Khawak Pass, a task from which Heracles might have 
shrunk. The very Promethean rock was pointed 
out, and the Macedonians were now in a position to 
sympathize with the god who had suffered so much 
to give humanity the great blessing of fire. Many of 
them lost limbs or life with cold, and the rest ate herbs 
and mountain sheep or slew their horses. Bessus 
was laying waste the country beyond them, and 
Alexander pushed on despite snow and ice. Below 
lay the beautiful province of Bactria with its plentiful 
fruit-trees and fields of corn and meadows, now part 
of Afghanistan; but the Macedonian armyhad to 
march through the desert tract of its western border, 
and here suffered terribly from drought and heat; and 
Alexander's heart misgave him as he saw the con- 
dition of his troops. He, at least, took more than his 
share of the toil of the march,^ and refused to drink 
when no water could be got for others; and he sent 
back to Macedonia and Greece the oldest Mace- 
donians and the Thessalians. 
ii6 



Alexander in Central Asia 

When Alexander approaelied the yellow Oxus, the 
boundary between Bactria and Sogdiana (now 
Bokhara and Turkestan), Bessus fled_across the 
stream, burning his boats, and, after conquering 
Aornus and Balkh (Bactra), the Bactrian capital, 
Alexander prepared to follow him. The Oxus, best 
known to most of us as the scene of Matthew Arnold's 
Sokrah and Rustum, entered the Caspian, not the 
Aral Sea, in Alexander's time. It was the broadest 
stream which the Macedonians had yet had to cross, 
and it took five days to convey the army over in 
primitive boats of hides stuffed with straw, native 
skiffs like those in which Alexander had crossed the 
Danube. In Sogdiana, the frontier province of the 
Persian Empire, Alexander carried out an even more 
far-fetched vengeance than at Persepolis. A century 
and a half ago the Branchidse of Miletus had given to 
Xerxes the treasures of the temple of Apollo to aid 
him in his invasion of Greece, and pitiable indeed 
would have been the fate of these traitors if the 
Greeks of their own time could have got hold of them. 
Xerxes, therefore, settled them in this farthest prov- 
ince of his realm where no Persian thought that 
any of their fellow-countrymen would ever come till 
the world's end. There their descendants still lived, 
unmixed with the natives, and speaking Greek. 
Strangers in a strange Eastern land, they received 
the Macedonians with rapture; they cannot have 
dreamed that the sins of their fathers would have been 
visited upon them after this lapse of time; and 
Alexander committed a .crime for which no excuse 
of any sort can be made, by slaying them and razing 
their city to the ground. 

117 



Alexander the Great 

Alexander had lost more men in his march through 
North-East Persia than in many of his battles, but he 
had now come to the Jaxartes, which was to be the 
north-eastern frontier of his as of the Persian Empire. 
On its southern bank, commanding the route to 
Northern Persia and the pass over the Tian-shan 
mountains, by which South-Eastern Europe has com- 
munication with China, he built Alexandria the 
Ultimate, on the site of the modern Khojend. As he 
was planning this town he heard of the rising of 
Sogdiana behind him, and immediately turned back. 
The inhabitants sought refuge in their seven cities; 
in two days five of these fell, and at two of them all 
the male inhabitants were slain, while the women and 
children and other booty were carried to the Mace- 
donian tents. At the largest of the seven, Cyropolis, 
the frontier city founded by Cyrus, Alexander brought 
up his military engines to batter down the high wall, 
but noticing that the bed of the river, which flowed 
through the town, was dry, he determined to creep 
into the town by its means in the night. All the 
Sogdian soldiery were engaged on the walls when he 
entered with a picked force by this route, and the city 
was in his hands before the garrison was aware of his 
presence. Still they made a valiant resistance, and 
it was only through lack of water that the citadel was 
surrendered on the following day. Both Alexander 
and Craterus were wounded. After the capture of 
the seven towns Alexander returned to the Jaxartes, 
and in twenty days fortified his new city, which he 
peopled with natives, Greek mercenaries, and worn- 
out Macedonians. From the opposite bank a gather- 
ing of 'Scythians' (it is thought that this may have 
ii8 



Alexander in Central Asia 

been the first emergence of the Turk in history) 
defied him, as the Getse had done on the Danube, and 
Alexander crossed for a mihtary demonstration here 
as there. He ordered skin boats to be prepared, and, 
despite his feebleness from his last wound and Arist- 
ander's warning that the omens were unfavourable, 
passed over and scattered the barbarians, chiefly by 
means of his archers. The excellent field artillery (a 
new thing in the history of war) protected the army as 
it was rowed across. The heat was so terrific that the 
King did not follow the flying foe; he drank some of 
the same sort of water that the natives drink to their 
detriment to-day and on which the Western traveller 
hardly dares to look, and fell dangerously ill. Hear- 
ing, however, of a fresh rising and of Macedonian 
disasters, he rose and laid waste Sogdiana. 

Alexander spent the winter of 328-7 B.C. in Bactria 
and Sogdiana, but failed in Hellenizing this typical 
Eastern country; indeed, he merely permanently 
weakened brave and warlike peoples, so that the 
nomad Magyars and Turks from the desert steppes 
north of the Oxus found no difficulty in overrunning 
it later, and it passed from hand to hand until Russia 
annexed the greater part in the nineteenth century. 

Sogdiana is, for the most part, a desolate region of 
desert, steppe, snow-capped mountain and glacier, 
but between it and Bactria runs the life-giving stream 
of the Zarafshan, the 'Strewer of Gold,' with the 
beautiful cities of Samarcand and Bokhara, so rich in 
mediaeval memories, on its banks. Afrosiab, adjoin- 
ing Samarcand on the east of that fair Moslim city, is 
the site, of the Maracanda of Alexander the Great's 
travels. Bessus fell into Alexander's hands this 
119 



Alexander the Great 

winter. He had won the dislike of his fellow- traitors, 
and, in fact, they could fly no farther: Scythia was 
no home for luxurious Persians. They therefore 
sought to save their own skins by surrendering Bessus, 
who received what ingenuity of punishment a king 
could devise for one who had been traitor to a king; 
finally, according to one account, his nose and ears 
cut off, he was taken to Ecbatana to die on the cross. 

Commanders and men were worn out by the labours 
and hardships of the last few years, and Alexander 
showed the effects of the strain. He was too pur- 
poseful to be often merry, but he became increasingly 
grim and forbidding, and he felt deeply the chasm 
between him and his friends; Hephsestion alone 
followed him cheerfully in his policy of conciliating 
Asiatic peoples to his rule by adopting their habits 
and customs, and he could trust few beyond him to 
deal with Asiatics. Craterus, whom he respected 
more than Hephaestion, clung to his old Macedonian 
ways, and Alexander said that Craterus was the 
King's friend, Hephsestion the friend of Alexander. 
On his part he showed ideal tolerance for their weak- 
nesses; Hagnon wore silver nails in his shoes; 
Leonnatus employed several camels to bring him 
powder out of Egypt for use when he wrestled; the 
dead Philotas used to have hunting nets a hundred 
furlongs in length; most of them used precious oint- 
ment instead of oil after the bath. He pardoned 
their various smallnesses, avarice, and folly, but 
would sometimes chide them for avoiding all bodily 
labour, saying that it was both noble and royal; and 
when they were not fighting he organized great 
hunting expeditions, so that sloth might not corrupt 



Alexander in Central Asia 

his Macedonians, who were now lords of many slaves. 
Now, amid the magic peace of Maracanda, Alexander 
still further darkened his shadowed life by the murder 
of his old friend Clitus. He and his courtiers sat late 
at a drinlving-party, and the King was listening, in 
approval, and, by his own confession, in drunkenness, 
to one who was praising him at the expense of Castor 
and Pollux, while some one was witty about the 
officers who had been defeated by the Sogdianians. 
Alexander was blind to the anger brewing among the 
older men, who, however, sought to calm down Clitus, 
ill-advised to choose this moment to flout the King. 
He told him that he owed all his glory to his soldiers, 
and taunted him with the fact that he had saved his 
life at the Granicus, although he pretended to be son 
of Ammon; and above all the clamour that burst out 
over his head, he shouted that if free men might not 
speak their minds, Alexander "had better live and 
converse with barbarians and slaves who would not 
scruple to bow the knee to his Persian girdle and his 
white tunic." Alexander, unable any longer to 
restrain his rage, threw at him one of the apples that 
lay on the table, and looked about for his sword. 
Some one had hidden it, and others tried to hold him 
while he called aloud in the Macedonian dialect, 
which he only used when very perturbed, for his 
guard. The trumpeter dared to neglect the order, 
and friends forced Clitus out of the room. Clitus, 
however, rushed back, and, hfting the curtain hanging 
over another exit, cried out a bitter line from Euri- 
pides. Snatching a spear from one of the soldiers 
standing near, Alexander hurled it at the curtain, 
and Clitus gave a cry and fell dead. The King 



Alexander the Great 

came suddenly to himself and saw the table where 
a short space before they had been carousing and 
laughing, his companions looking at him with white, 
startled faces, and, lying dead in the doorway, his 
old foster-mother's brother, Clitus. Seizing the pike 
with which he had slain Clitus, he sought to take his 
own life, of which he suddenly sickened, but his 
guards prevented him; and for three days he lay 
moaning and refusing food, calling ever on Clitus and 
Lanice, and saying he had made a noble reward for 
all her care in rearing him, since she had lived to see 
her sons die fighting in his behaK, and her brother 
slain by his hand. At last he put away his grief; in 
dreamy Maracanda it was easy to persuade him that 
this thing, like all others, was appointed by the gods, 
and a sophist was found to teach him that the King, 
being the fountain of justice, can do no wrong. 
Alexander's deepest conviction about this affair 
came to be that he was not responsible for his own 
action. He had been incited to crime by a god. 
Like Orestes, he was hunted for a while by the 
Erinyes, and they sat evermore on his threshold 
waiting to avenge. 

He had now twice tasted the blood of his friends, 
and at Bactra, Callisthenes the Olynthian, Aristotle's 
nephew, who had followed Alexander in order to 
chronicle his deeds, fell into disgrace. He seems to 
have treated Alexander to the same sort of snub 
which Solon dealt out to Croesus, and Alexander in 
these days was little likely to enjoy it; Aristotle had 
said of Callisthenes that he was an excellent speaker 
but had no judgment. There was a great deal of 
nobility in his character, and he died like a martyr for 




THE MURDER OF CLITUS 



Alexander in Central Asia 

a worthy cause, the right of free speech and action in 
an Asiatic court such as Alexander's had become. 
He was ardently opposed to the custom of prostration, 
and at a wine party, where the subject was specially 
brought up by Alexander, he made an impassioned 
speech against it. At the close of the feast, Alexander 
drank the health of the circle of guests, and handed 
the golden goblet first to those who were in sympathy 
with him in the attempt about to be made. They 
drank, prostrated themselves, and received a kiss 
from the King. Persian and Macedonian followed 
each other until it came to the turn of Callisthenes, 
who drank, summoned up his courage, and did not 
prostrate himself. The King thereupon refused him 
the kiss, and he left the feast, saying lightly, "I have 
but lost a kiss. " The occasion chosen to destroy this 
churlish courtier was the Conspiracy of the Pages. 
The corps of pages was a school of generals, and 
several boys who were to be kings after Alexander's 
death were then of this band, and they had deter- 
mined to murder Alexander because he had caused 
one of their number to be whipped. There seems to 
have been no evidence against Callisthenes, who was 
charged with inciting them and put to death. The 
King seems to have absorbed the new lesson of 
Maracanda that he was fountain of justice, and that 
all his deeds were consequently just. There had 
been much in Callisthenes' conversation to enrage 
him; he was very sore at the talk against him in 
Athens, and at this time he even vaguely threatened 
Callisthenes' kinsman, his own old teacher Aristotle. 
Alexander was again forced to cross the Oxus, but 
after some more hard fighting the last opposition 
123 



Alexander the Great 

sank. In the spring of 327 B.C. lie captured tlie 
Sogdian Rock, from the dizzy heights (18,000 feet) 
of which the defenders called jeeringly to ask him if 
he could fly. Choosing a hundred men who had been 
mountain shepherds, he offered rewards of from one 
to ten talents to the first ten to reach the top, and 
otherwise incited their valour. They climbed the 
rock in the most precipitous and therefore unguarded 
place, in the night, fixing their iron tent pegs in the 
earth or hard-frozen snow as they mounted and tying 
strong ropes to the pegs. Thirty perished in the 
climb, and, buried in the snow, were never seen again. 
The rest reached the summit at dawn and managed 
to stand and wave their white linen flags to the King 
watching anxiously below. The barbarians gathered 
round them and imagined that they had indeed some 
arrangement for flying, and, in their fear and amaze- 
ment, surrendered. Alexander, to whom the terms 
Greek and Barbarian were becoming more and more 
mere words, married Roxane, the beautiful daughter 
of the Bactrian chief, Oxyartes, by the simple Mace- 
donian ceremony of slicing a loaf and eating one-half 
while she ate the other. Oxyartes' influence and this 
marriage reconciled the Sogdianians and Bactrians 
to the rule of the foreigner, and Alexander might at 
length leave the district. The head of the last 
rebellious chieftain was brought into the camp by his 
wife, whom Alexander caused to be driven away in 
disgrace. 



124, 



CHAPTER X: The Conquest 
of the Punjab (327-326 b.c.) 

PERHAPS owing to his early death Alexander 
left no abiding impression on Turkestan or 
Afghanistan, and now he was going to do an 
equally ephemeral work in India. It is only fair to 
remember that he would have known how to control 
this conquered territory, and that had he left a son 
of full age Macedonia might have remained the head 
of the wealthiest empire the world has ever seen. 
East and West, had Alexander lived, would have been 
united in the bonds of trade as they were under the 
Romans, while eastern countries that never bowed 
to the Roman came under the yoke of the Macedonian. 
In the light of actual events, however, all Alexander's 
labours beyond the Euphrates seem vain. 

In the late spring of 327 B.C. thi^ little western 
torrent rolled out of Afghanistan and with its accre- 
tions made for a country even more alien than 
Sogdiana to the land where it took its rise: Indian 
sages were to try to discourage Alexander by telling 
him that every man possessed as much of the earth 
as he stepped on, and that in the end he possessed no 
more than he could lie down upon. Alexander set 
forth more like a sultan than a Greek king; he con- 
tented himself with an army of 120,000 men, at the 
most exaggerated computation, and probably only 
half that number, but the most gorgeous raiment 
was worn ,and the horses were trapped with gold 
and silver. The Greeks knew nothing of India, but 
believed that the Indians surpassed the Persians 
in magnificence; hence, probably, this show. The 

125 



Alexander the Great 

proud soldiers must almost all have been in Eastern 
dress by this time, since their Macedonian clothes 
were long ago in rags. Crossing the Hindu-Kush by 
the Khawak and Kaoshan passes, Alexander advanced 
to the Kabul (then the Kophen) and sent a herald to 
Ambhi (Omphis), known to the Greeksas Taxiles, 
from the country he governed, and to other chiefs 
dwelling on the farther side of the Indus, bidding 
them submit to the lord of the world. Taxiles at 
once offered submission, and remained on Alexander's 
side throughout his sojourn in India. He and some 
other chiefs wished for Alexander's aid against the 
great Indian chief, Porus, of whom we shall hear later, 
and they did very well for themselves by aiding the 
Macedonian. Alexander was one or two days' jour- 
ney from the Khyber Pass, by which Jenghiz Khan, 
Tamerlane, and so many other foreign conquerors 
were to descend in future ages into the rich valleys 
of India, but, it is thought, this pass was not used in 
Alexander's time. He divided his army, and sent 
half forward under Hephsestion and Perdiccas to fight 
its way up the Kabul valley across the mountains and 
prepare a bridge for his crossing of the Indus. Many 
months were spent by the remaining force in this wild 
district in fighting even more desperate than that in 
Sogdiana and Bactria, before Alexander was ready 
for the entry into India. He as well as Ptolemy and 
Leonnatus were several times wounded, despite the 
fact that whole villages were destroyed in order to 
daunt the ardour of the warhke inhabitants. Once 
he had encamped in a forest near the city of Nysa, 
now lost, in the Suwat, bordering the slopes of 
the Koh-i-Mor, and, on account of the cold, huge 
126 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

fires were made. The cedar-wood monuments of the 
Nyssean dead in the forest caught fire, the flames 
spread, and the distant glare woke the citizens to the 
knowledge that the enemy was at their gates. Noth- 
ing could have saved them, had not the Macedonians, 
to whom Dionysus was most dear, learned the name 
of their city. Dionysus had been hidden in the thigh 
of Zeus on a mountain which he named Nysa after his 
nurse; and on Mount Mhos ('thigh'), now Koh-i- 
Mor, near by, the Macedonians found the god's sacred 
vine and ivy. The war-worn soldiery, ever emotional 
as children, went wild in a Dionysiac frenzy. After 
the manner of the Bacchanals of their native land they 
covered themselves with ivy, crowned their heads with 
the vine, danced the mystic dances, and sang the sacred 
hymns. Those who stood by, at first wondering, 
quickly imitated their example, and for ten days India 
saw the foreigners engaged in a ritual sympathetic to 
her own manners, and perhaps truly derived from her 
before the memory of man. Nysa was allowed to re- 
tain her independence, though it was understood that 
Alexander might call for a contingent of soldiers. 

At last all the remaining inhabitants of the district 
abandoned their cities and took refuge on Mount 
Aornus ('The Birdless'), most probably Mahaban, 
near the Indus, about 7000 feet high and 23 miles in 
circuit, and possessing arable land and abundance 
of water. There was but one means of ascent and 
that a difficult one; the early conqueror identified 
by tradition as Heracles had found this natural 
citadel impregnable, and Alexander solemnly pro- 
ceeded to outdo Heracles. Some of the natives 
offered to guide him up for a reward, and he readily 
127 



Alexander the Great 

offered the large sum of eighty talents. Ptolemy 
and a small force were sent with the guides and estab- 
lished themselves where an assault could be made, 
building a stockade in front of them and lighting a 
beacon as a signal to the King; but before Alexander 
could join Ptolemy both forces were simultaneously 
attacked by the Indians. At last Alexander got a 
letter carried to Ptolemy by an Indian deserter, and 
managed to join forces with him, but their joint 
attack failed. Multitudes of trees were hewn down 
to make an enormous mound whence to project 
missiles from the military engines, and the Mace- 
donians then captured a small eminence on a level 
with the citadel. As the mound approached the rock 
the natives determined to retreat by stealth. They 
sent with offers of surrender to beg for a truce, and com- 
menced their flight. Alexander, as usual, had intelli- 
gence of their doings, and as they deserted their citadel 
he entered it, and then dispatched troops to chase the 
fugitives. Many were slain, and the rest perished by 
leaping in their panic down the precipices. We can 
estimate Alexander's intrepidity by remembering that 
portions of this country remain unsurveyed to this day 
on account of the fierceness of the inhabitants. 

By this time the bridge over the Indus was ready. 
Alexander and the Romans after him usually passed 
over wide streams by means of bridges of boats, 
formed by mooring a suflScient number of vessels in 
place by anchors of stones, lowered in wicker baskets 
from the prow of each vessel, and laying planks and 
cross planks on them until they were firmly bound 
together, strong gangways being placed at each end of 
the bridge. When the King arrived at the Indus, the 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

river b ank was crowded with cattle and elephants sent as 
a gift from Taxiles, who surrendered his city Taxila to 
him. Alexander crossed the Indus (probably at Ohind) 
at daybreak in March 326 B.C., almost a year after his 
departure from Bactria. The permanent boundary of 
his empire he in all probability intended to be the 
Indus, and was now merely exploring, imagining that 
he was near the Eastern Ocean; but he was thwarted 
in his Indian schemes, and we are really ignorant as to 
what may have been his original aims in entering India. 
India, where no European traveller had ever ven- 
tured before in human record, was a great surprise 
to the Macedonians. They found a people blacker 
than any other Asiatic race, tall, simple and frugal 
in habit, and more warlike than any people with 
whom they had come into contact. Its marvels of 
vegetation, its brilliantly coloured birds and strange 
beasts threw them into amazement, and the tropical 
rains through which they had to march for their first 
battle in the Punjab plunged these hardened veterans 
into the deepest misery. Taxila is probably com- 
memorated by the vast ruins near Rawalpindi, a city 
which was a famous centre of Hindu culture. Alex- 
ander rested and held sacrifices and games, and then 
left a garrison there to hold the Indus. From the 
Indus the army marched in the sultry April weather 
to the Hydaspes (Jehlam), the next great river of the 
Punjab. Here its further progress was opposed by 
the heroic king Porus, who ruled from the Hydaspes 
to the Acesines (Chenab), the district of which 
Lahore is now the centre. Porus was, we are assured, 
four cubits and a span high, and, mounted upon an 
elephant of the largest size, appeared to have as suit- 
129 



Alexander the Great 

able a mount as another man upon a horse. He stood 
on the farther brink of the Hydaspes with a force of 
foot-soldiers and cavahy not half so large as that of 
the Macedonians, but possessing a large number of 
chariots and a host of loudly roaring elephants. All 
the fords of the stream were guarded by his troops, 
and never had Alexander met a braver, more deter- 
mined or more skilful foe. On the other hand, an 
Indian prince, however brave and skilled was pre- 
destined to fall before a master of every sort of war- 
fare and expert in stratagem like Alexander. The 
latter sat down as if to wait for the subsidence of the 
stream, swollen with incessant rains, and at the same 
time made a pretence of night surprises. For many 
nights Porus, hearing noises and seeing moving lights 
on the farther bank, kept his men in readiness for 
battle, but as night after night nothing happened, he 
ceased to take notice of these alarms. This was 
Alexander's aim. He had perceived at a bend in the 
Hydaspes, about seventeen miles from his camp, a 
projecting headland covered by a dense grove, with 
a well- wooded island in front. Here he determined 
to cross, while at the same time a feigned attempt at 
crossing was to be made by Craterus from the camp. 
Under certain conjunctures, Craterus was really to 
cross. With Perdiccas, Lysimachus, Seleucus and 
other generals, the Companions and a picked force of 
infantry, Alexander made a secret march at night, 
going for some way inland and returning to the 
stream at the chosen place of crossing, where an ex- 
temporized fleet was collected. A furious thunder- 
storm and the heavy rain aided the attempt, and the 
army was not perceived by the sentinels of Porus until 
130 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

it was beyond the island. They flew off on the long 
ride to Porus, but the Macedonian had time to com- 
plete his crossing and draw up his army. His boat 
was the first to touch land, but he soon discovered to 
his dismay that he was not on the mainland but on 
another island, and it was some time before the ford 
was found. The stream was so high with the rains 
that only the heads of the infantry and horses were to 
be seen above the water, and as he climbed up the 
slippery shore Alexander is reported to have cried, 
"O Athenians, would you believe what dangers I 
incur to merit your praise?" He might have made 
such a speech at the Granicus, but hardly now, al- 
though he may have hoped that when his schemes 
were one day perfected Aristotle would at last under- 
stand that they were great, and wonder, like all the 
world, at the man who had the strength to carry 
them out. Directly after the Macedonians' landing 
the son of Porus rode up with a hastily gathered force, 
but was repulsed and slain. The news was borne 
to Porus, who was torn with doubt as to the fitting 
course to take. Opposite him was Craterus, seem- 
ingly prepared to cross, above was Alexander slaying 
his subjects. He determined to take the risk of leav- 
ing Craterus opposed by a small force with a few 
elephants which he thought would prevent his cross- 
ing. When he came to a fitting battle-ground, he 
halted and drew up his forces, placing in front, as he 
saw that the Macedonian horse was approaching, a 
line of two hundred elephants, standing one hundred 
feet apart, to frighten the horses; behind and beyond 
the elephants he placed infantry, flanking the in- 
fantry with cavalry. The chariots arranged in front 
131 



Alexander the Great 

of the cavalry on each side were of no use on account 
of the muddy ground. When Alexander heard the 
tambours and saw this novel array, he waited for his 
infantry to come up, but wished it, despite the ele- 
phants, to be a cavalry battle, and Porus was unable 
to prevent his making it so. Alexander himself led 
the cavalry charge against the enemy's left front, 
while he sent Coenus round to attack the same force 
in the rear. The Indian left had to face both ways, 
and speedily fell into confusion. They fled for 
shelter behind the elephants, who stood solid and 
massive like towers in a wall. The elephant drivers 
sought to urge their beasts against the Macedonian 
cavalry; the phalanx intervened, and the animals 
made fearful inroads into their serried ranks, raising 
the combatants with their trunks and handing them 
to the Indians. The Macedonians, however, with 
axes and swords chopped at their trunks and limbs, 
and, at last, mad with the pain of arrows and spears, 
the huge creatures began to trample under foot friend 
and foe. They injured the Indians more than the 
Macedonians, until those which had not been slain 
began to back out of the battle, facing the enemy and 
littering a shrill, pathetic, piping sound. Alexander 
then surrounded the foe with his cavalry, and at his 
order the phalanx with linked shields pressed the 
Indians back, and cut down all who did not succeed in 
flying through the gaps between the masses of cavalry. 
When Craterus perceived that Alexander was win- 
ning, he brought over the rest of the army, and his 
fresh troops slaughtered the flying foe. Rarely had 
the soldiers inflicted such carnage, and among the 
twenty odd thousand Indians lying in the thick mud 
132 




THE PHALANX ATTACKING THE CENTRE ON THE HYDASPES 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

round their dead elephants and broken chariots, were 
two sons of Porus. Porus, richly armed and accou- 
tred, still sat, a gigantic figure on his great elephant. 
He had fought on until all were slain or fled, and now, 
having received a new wound, turned his beast about 
to depart from a lost field. Alexander sent Taxiles 
to bring the King to him, but he tried to slay this old 
foe. Alexander, moved with admiration, took some 
pains to get the valiant chief to return, sending his 
friend Meroes, and at last Porus rode slowly back, 
while Alexander came out to the front to meet him 
and admire at close quarters his handsome figure and 
lofty stature. Porus greeted him as one brave man 
would another, and when Alexander asked him how 
he expected to be used, he answered: "As a king," a 
reply which struck the strongest chord in Alexander's 
breast. Not only was he magnanimous enough to 
confirm Porus in his rule, but he added to his terri- 
tories. Thus was fought the great battle of the 
Hydaspes in June or July 326 b. c. Two cities were 
founded near each other, one, Nicsea ('Victory'), 
now Mong, where the battle took place, south of the 
Karri plain, the other, Bucephala, on the opposite 
bank of the Hydaspes, in memory of Bucephalus, 
which died at this point, worn out with age and toil. 
Bucephala became a great city, and has been identi- 
fied with the modern, Jhelum, where an ancient road 
terminates in an ancient ferry. Somewhere Alexander 
founded a city to the memory of his dog Peritas. 

After a month's halt on the shores of the Hydaspes 
for rest, games, and sacrifices, Alexander left Craterus 
to superintend the building of the new cities, and 
went on his way across the Punjab. Populous towns 



Alexander the Great 

and large villages surrendered as lie approached. He 
crossed the Acesines at a point where it was nearly 
two miles wide and as tempestuous as a mountain 
torrent. Those who went over in skins had an easy- 
passage, but many of those who went in wooden 
boats perished, as the skiffs were dashed to pieces on 
the rocks. Porus, nephew of the defeated king, was 
still in revolt, and Hephaestion was sent against him, 
while Alexander went on over the Hydraotis (Ravi), 
where he had much trouble with the Kathseans and 
other tribes. The city of Sangala, which stood on a 
hill, was protected by a triple palisade of wagons and 
a large force of Indians. The Indians mounted on 
the wagons and shot at Alexander's cavalry as it 
advanced, and Alexander saw that it was not suitable 
warfare for this arm, so he dismounted and led the 
phalanx against the wagons. After a hard struggle 
he captured the palisade and besieged the city. At 
night a flight took place as he expected, and he cut 
to pieces the small party that left the city; then 
he formed a double stockade, surrounding Sangala 
except at one point where there was a lake, and at 
the open part he placed a strong guard. He was 
preparing his battering-engines when a deserter told 
him that a second attempt at flight was to be made 
on the following night at the lake. Here Ptolemy 
was accordingly stationed, with orders to give the 
signal if anything happened. In the middle of the 
night the gates were opened and the Indians stole out. 
Ptolemy blew his bugle and drove them back with 
great slaughter, while the army partly threw down, 
partly scaled, the wall. In the fight Lysimachus 
was wounded and many other officers were slain. 
134 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

The city was razed to thegroundby the Macedonians. 
Still the King pressed on, and now came to the 
river Hyphasis (the Beas) ; but here the over- wearied 
army refused to march farther. In vain Alexander 
represented that the distance from the Ganges and 
the Eastern Sea was not great, and pleaded with his 
soldiers to follow him onward. "Glorious," he told 
them in the eloquent way that had so often nerved 
them in the moment of danger and inspired them 
to bear extraordinary hardships, "Glorious are the 
deeds of those who undergo labour and run the risk 
of danger; and it is delightful to live a life of valour 
and to die leaving behind immortal glory." All 
their conquests were thrown away if they went back 
now; he and his soldiers had shared their toil and 
danger and also their rewards, and when they had 
traversed the whole of Asia, he himself would lead 
them back to Macedonia, giving them gifts to exceed 
their hopes; and, he concluded, thinking of his 
colonies, "those who remain here I will make objects 
of envy to those who go back. " For once the King's 
harangue left the army ,unmoved. A long silence 
followed, for the soldiers dared not speak. Several 
times he asked the opposition to express its views, 
and at length Coenus, after an artful preamble, thus 
stated the case: "O King, you see yourself how many 
Macedonians and Greeks started with you, and how 
few of us are left. Of our number you did well to 
send back the Thessalians, because you saw that they 
were no longer in the mind for new labours. Of the 
other Greeks, some have been settled as colonists in 
the cities which you have founded, and not all of 
them remain there of their own free will. The Mace- 
135 



Alexander the Great 

donian soldiers and the other Greeks who still con- 
tinued to share our labours and dangers, have either 
perished in battle, become unfit for war on account 
of their wounds, or been left behind in diJfferent parts 
of Asia. The majority, however, have perished from 
disease, so that few are left out of many; and these 
few are no longer so vigorous in body as of old, while 
they are still more exhausted in spirit. All those 
whose parents still survive feel a great yearning to 
see them once more; they feel a longing for their 
wives and children and for their native land itself, 
surely pardonable with the honour and dignity they 
have acquired from you, returning as great men, 
whereas they departed small, and as rich men instead 
of being poor. Do not lead us now against our will ; for 
you will no longer find us the same men. Let the King 
carry to the home of his fathers these victories so many 
and so great, and then set forth afresh with fresh young 
troops and go to the uttermost parts of the earth. " 

At this cheering broke forth, and the more broken 
down of the old troops wept as Ccenus touched 
on their wretched condition. Weak voices prayed 
Alexander as their king, chieftain, and father to lead 
the army back to Macedonia. Alexander, annoyed 
at his general's freedom of speech, but more at the 
temper of the troops, dismissed the conference, and 
on the following day played his last card. He 
announced that he was going on, that he did not 
intend to insist on their accompanying him, and that 
those who wished were at liberty to go back and say 
in Macedonia that they had left their King alone 
among his enemies. Then he retired to his tent, 
where he remained until the third day, not admitting 
136 



The Conquest of the Punjab 

even the Companions, and expecting hourly the sub- 
mission of the army. He was to receive it in similar 
circumstances later at Opis, but at this time the 
soldiery simply awaited his reappearance in silence 
and resentment. At last the King reappeared. He 
must have resolved to go back, but he caused the 
auspices to be taken for the crossing of the river. 
They were said to be evil, and announcement was 
made to the army that, as the gods were unfavourable 
to further progress, the King had decided to return. 
A shout of joy rose from the radiant troops; they 
rushed in crowds to the royal tent and blessed Alex- 
ander because he, the unconquered, had allowed him- 
self to be conquered by them. It was one of the 
bitterest moments in his life, but he showed no sign. 
As a jest or an advertisement, Alexander caused 
enormous camps to be traced, with gigantic beds for 
men and preposterous mangers for horses, when he 
left the Hyphasis, in order that stories might grow up 
in India of thevisit of some giant race; and twelve 
great altars were erected, and sacrifices made to the 
twelve Olympians. The Macedonians bade a solemn 
farewell to this far-away In lian stream, and Alexan- 
der, having 'rounded the goal of his course,' turned 
westward in September 326 B.C. from a land to which 
he was never to return with the fresh young troops 
suggested by Coenus. Three more years and this rest- 
less life was to be over. It is of some interest to the 
idle to speculate on what would have happened had 
Alexander continued his onward march. What 
would have happened to the King '^ And what would 
have happened to his Western empire.'^ Would he 
have lived if he had not gone back to Babylon? 
137 



CHAPTER XI: The Return 

to Susa (326-324 B.C.) 

THE Alexandrian Empire was now sketched 
out as far as extent went, and Alexander 
turned his marvellous energies for the short 
remaining portion of his life to its organization, 
although vast schemes of commercial expansion and 
geographical discovery were on the stocks when he 
died. The cities he established were from the first 
as much trading centres as garrisons, and were prob- 
ably intended by him to be so. When he finally 
returned to Pella — if he ever intended to return to 
that unattractive spot, after seeing so many wonderful 
cities — the riches of the East were to roll naturally 
in,to Macedonia through the conduits he was laying 
down. Western commerce with India was for the 
first time to be possible, and Alexander was about to 
make a determined effort to circumnavigate Africa 
when he died. His decision to avoid wearisome land 
marches for his army by sea voyages must have led in 
itself to the acquirement of new geographical knowl- 
edge. He was also building a fleet for exploration of 
the Caspian. By the side of schemes like these, the 
picture of his ignorant soldiers struggling along under 
the sacks of booty which were to them all that war 
meant, is a pitiable one; but King and common 
soldier fared much the same in the long run. The 
King passed away with all his schemes unfinished, 
and the men either lost their booty on the way or 
perished before arriving home with it. 

Porus was made viceroy of the country as far as 
the Hyphasis. The Hydraotes and Acesines were 
X38 



The Return to Susa 

recrossed by the army, rejoicing in the thought that 
in a few months' time all their labours would be over, 
and they might settle down as rich and famous men 
for life. On the shore of the Acesines, Ccenus fell ill 
and died, and the monarch, who buried him magnifi- 
cently, in his usual way, could not refrain from say- 
ing that the return toward Macedonia for which 
Coenus had pleaded had not done him much good. 
Nor did Alexander intend the army to march home 
by the quickest route. Besides draggin,g part of the 
force through the wilds of Gedrosia, it is thought that 
he meant to lead the army home to Macedonia via 
Syria, Egypt, Africa, Spain, and Italy, and there are 
signs that for himself he intended to make Susa his 
permanent capital. 

At the Hydaspes Alexander stayed some time to 
superintend affairs at his two new cities and prepare 
for the heroic expedition which was to prove one 
of the heaviest labours of the long-suffering army. 
Men of his time speculated, as modern men have specu- 
lated, about the sources of the Nile, and Alexander 
must have thought that river of extraordinary extent, 
as he at first imagined that the Indus was the same 
stream. The natives, however, told him that the 
Hydaspes and Acesines united and joined the Indus, 
which then flowed southward and formed a delta at 
its issue into the ocean. He also learned for the first 
time that by traversing this ocean westward, keeping 
near the coast, vessels would arrive at the mouths of 
the Euphrates and Tigris (which did not un,ite at that 
time) wheuce it was a short march to Susa. The 
King had never seen the ocean, and like every other 
Greek had heard plentiful stories of its perils, the chief 
139 



Alexander the Great 

of which were its supernatural horrors; nevertheless 
there opened before his mind's eye the vast possi- 
bilities of ocean travel, and he caused this new route 
to be explored. The whole army went southward 
toward the ocean, down the Hydaspes and on its 
banks. With its barbarian accretions it fwas npw a 
huge force. Craterus rode along the right bank of 
the stream at the head of one contingent; Hephsestion 
on the left bank at the head of another with two 
hundred elephants, while the fleet, amounting to 
nearly two thousand craft, was under Nearchus, 
Onesicrates, who wrote an unreliable account of the 
King's tr^vdls, being pilot of _the royal ship. At the 
approach of dawn of an October day in 326 B.C., as 
the last troops were embarking, Alexander offered 
sacrifices to the rivers Hydaspes, Acesines, and Indus, 
to Poseidon, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and Ocean, as 
well as to Zeus Ammon. and Heracles. When he had 
embarked he poured out a hbation to the river deities 
from a golden goblet, and ordered the signal for 
starting seaward to be given by the trumpet. The 
In lians accompanied the army for a considerable 
distance along the banks of the stream, dancing and 
singing their native songs. The cries of the boat- 
swains and the plash of the oars reverberated long 
after the last Macedonian boat had passed out of 
sight down the river. 

At the juncture of the Hydaspes with the Acesines 
several vessels were wrecked by the roaring, dashing 
waves, and Alexander might have felt that he had 
fought with these streams as Achilles had striven 
with the Scamander. When the fleet had again 
reached calm water, the King went on an inland ex- 
140 



The Return to Susa 

pedition against the Mallians and nearly lost his life 
in a momen,t of reckless valour. He marched sixty- 
miles through waterless country, captured the chief 
city and slaughtered all the inhabitants, while Per- 
diccas took another town from which the barbarians 
had fled. Then, chasing the fugitives before them, 
the soldiers sped on to the Hyarotis, forded it, and 
rushed onward, slaying, till they came to a stronghold 
of the Brahmins and drove its defenders from their 
walls. As the Indians withdrew into their citadel, a 
few Macedonians rushed in with them, but fought 
their way out again. Alexander then brought up 
his siege engines and ordered scaling ladders to be 
placed against the walls of the citadel. He himself 
was the first man to leap down among the enemy. 
The soldiers quickly followed, and nearly the entire 
body of defenders, about five thousand, were slain. 
Other sieges and battles followed, and one day 
Alexander, again the first to mount a scaling ladder 
when besieging a Mallian stronghold, was left alone 
with Peucestas, Abreas, and Leonnatus, through the 
ladder breaking with the weight of climbers beneath. 
Aloft in his glittering armour, a mark for every missile, 
there seemed to be only one thing for the King to do, 
and that was to slip down among his friends as they 
called to him to do. Instead, he leaped suddenly 
down over the wall into the hostile city. It was 
magnificent, but was it war? It seems almost im- 
pertinent to put such a question to such a warrior, 
but his army did not hesitate to ask it when they 
had got him safely out again; they seem, indeed, 
to have feared that he had become indifferent to life, 
for, in their remonstrance, they laid the greatest stress 
141 



Alexander the Great 

on his responsibilities. Meanwhile, like some myth- 
ical Norse hero, Alexander was fighting below, single- 
handed, against a host. A tree, as he had no doubt 
calculated before leaping down,, gave him a certain 
amount of cover. The Indians thronged round him, 
eager to dispatch the dragon that had devoured 
Asia, but he slew those who approached. They were 
forced to draw back, and from a distance threw 
missiles; thus he stood, with his back to the wall, 
surrounded by a little heap of corpses, when the 
three who had climbed up behind him sprang down 
to his assistance. Abreas was instantly transfixed 
by an arrow and fell dead, and Alexander was now 
pierced through the breast-plate. He fought on 
though dizzy with loss of blood until he fell swooning 
over his shield. Then Peucestas leaped in front of 
him, holding over him the sacred shield brought from 
Troy, while Leonnatus guarded him on the other side. 
Both were wounded, and still no help came. The 
Macedonians outside were so eager to get up to help 
their King that all the ladders were broken, and they 
only mounted in the end by driving pegs into the 
wall or climbing in stages on each others' shoulders. 
When at last they leaped down on the inside, a loud 
cry of lamentation rose, for they saw their King lyyig 
on the ground as though dying. A desperate con- 
flict followed around his fallen body until the city 
gate was forced and the whole body of soldiery poured 
into the town. While some bore off the King on his 
shield, others turned to the congenial work of revenge, 
and not a man, woman or child in that city escaped 
death. When the arrow was removed from the King's 
wound, after an operation borne with Spartan forti- 
142 



The Return to Susa 

tude, he bled copiously and swooned again, and it 
was some time before he was sufficiently recovered 
to return to his fleet and army at the junction of the 
Hyarotis and the Acesines, where Nearchus and 
Hephsestion exercised their respective rules. A 
report had been carried that he was dead, and after 
the first lamentations for their beloved leader, the 
soldiers were struck with fear in contemplating their 
own position without Alexander in the midst of hostile 
nations. There was no one of Alexander's generals 
whom they thought for a moment of comparing with 
the King, and they may have shrewdly guessed that 
men like Hephsestion and Craterus, already bitter 
rivals, would have gone to war with each other rather 
than have accepted the other's superiority. Their 
direst forebodings at this time were fulfilled less than 
three years later, when Alexander actually died. A 
letter from the King arrived at the camp, but it was 
believed to be a forgery, and Alexander, hearing of 
all that was going on, and fearing a revolution, rose 
from his sick bed. He was carried to the Hydraotis 
and placed in a boat. The oars were muffled as he 
was too ill to bear their noise, and the usual cries of 
the boatmen were silenced in the long, slow journey 
down the Hydraotis to the Acesines. As he ap- 
proached the camp, the tent covering was removed 
so that the army might see the sick king with its own 
eyes. But the soldiers were incredulous, believing 
that Alexander's corpse was being brought to them, 
until they saw his hand feebly waving. Then a 
great cheer rose from the crowd and many wept. A 
litter was brought, but, ill as he was, Alexander was 
lifted on to a horse and rode amid shouts of joy 
143 



Alexander the Great 

toward his tent. At the entrance he dismounted, so 
that he might be seen walking, and the men crowded 
round him; some touched his hands or knees or 
clothes to be quite sure that he was really there and 
alive, while others threw the garlands and flowers of 
India. Afterward, severely chidden for his wanton 
recklessness, an old Boeotian replied for him, to the 
tune set by both Alexander and his father, in a line 
from ^schylus, "Who does must suffer." Neigh- 
bouring nations, including the Mallians, now sent in 
their submission. 

Sailing down the Acesines to its junction with the 
Indus, Alexander there founded another great city 
of Alexandria, with a large dockyard, and created a 
new province stretching from this point to the coast. 
Another Alexandria with another dockyard was 
founded as he sailed down the Indus to the sea. He 
sent Craterus with the worn-out soldiers to march 
back to Persis by the Bolan Pass and Sistan, and 
then spent some time in reducing the cities and 
sovereigns of Sind, again coming into conflict with 
the Brahmins, whom he learned to respect as deep 
philosophers. The scanty reports indicate a fierce 
resistance: cities were razed to the ground, and 
their inhabitants sold into slavery. At Patala, the 
ancient capital of Lower Sind, near the apex of the 
Indus delta, Alexander established a third great city 
with harbour and dockyards, for he had made a 
correct estimate of the wealth and importance of 
India. It is almost certain that he would have 
organized permanent trading relations between this 
country and the West, although he would perhaps 
never have found his way round by the Cape. Of 
144 



The Return to Susa 

that, even, we cannot be sure, since he usually suc- 
ceeded in what other people thought to be impossible. 
He only reigned for thirteen years, and we can never 
cease to wonder how far the world would have been 
changed had his life been of the normal span. When 
his third city in the new province was well on its 
way, he sailed down the right branch of the Indus 
(the Buggaur) to the sea. At a certain point, natives 
with primitive notions informed the Macedonians 
that if they sailed on for three days they would 
come to bitter water which spoiled sweet water, and 
thus they knew that the ocean was near. Most of 
the inhabitants fled far away, and Alexander could 
not even find a pilot, while a storm damaged nearly 
all his vessels. He was forced to send troops into 
the interior to capture some Indians to guide them 
out of the river, and finally the Macedonian fleet 
anchored in the last roadstead before the open sea. 

The JSgean, with its many islands and consequent 
cross currents can be as rough as the ocean, so it was 
not on account of its tossing that the Greeks looked 
forward to their coming experience with dread. Be- 
sides its supernatural terrors, the limitless character 
of the ocean appalled them. Moreover, as they 
came to the mouth of the Indus, they were alarmed 
by the phenomenon of the tide of which they knew 
nothing. The water came in and out like a living 
thing, softly raising the ships anchored on the mud, 
but doing serious damage to those on hard ground. 
After the first attack and retreat, soldiers were placed 
to give warning if it should happen again, and prepa- 
rations were eventually made on the strength of 
the ocean's regular hours. Alexander again made 
145 



Alexander the Great 

solemn offerings to those gods to whom, he said, 
Ammon had bid him render especial honour, and 
sailed out to inspect and to perform his priestly duties. 
On the open ocean for the first time in his life, he 
sacrificed to Poseidon and cast the golden goblet 
and bowls used for the libation into the sea as an 
offering for the safety of the fleet, which he was 
sending thence to the Persian Gulf on an errand of 
discovery of the utmost importance to his future 
schemes, and perhaps little thought to see again. 
Then he returned to the shore. Nearchus, his child- 
hood's friend, was to command the fleet, while 
Alexander marched along the desolate shores of the 
Mekran, an infinitely more foolhardy journey in 
modern eyes, digging wells and leaving stores of food 
for the sailors at various points of the coast. Nearchus 
was compelled to wait for fit weather, as the southerly 
monsoon was then prevailing, and early in the 
autumn of 325 B.C. the King bade him farewell and 
started on a journey that no European was to make 
again for over two thousand years. Indeed it is 
thought that it cannot have been quite so dreadful 
in Alexander's time as it is to-day, or his army 
could never have arrived alive at the other end. 

At first the soldiers were delighted by the myrrh 
trees, the odoriferous roots of nard and the exotic 
flowers, and another city of Alexandria was founded 
among the warlike Oritians; but soon the Macedonians 
entered a waterless waste. A few fisher-folk only 
were met within this desolate coast region of Gedrosia. 
Both Alexander and Nearchus came into contact with 
the Ichthyophagi ('Fish-eaters'), who lived in huts 
made of mussel-shells, with roofs of the backbones 
146 



The Return to Susa 

of fishes. A whale offered great architectural possi- 
bilities to these simple, briny people; they had dis- 
covered that its jawbones made a perfect pointed 
doorway. Their drink was sea- water filtered through 
gravel. The army became gradually more and more 
wretched, while all their King seemed to think of 
was catering for the fleet. They came one day to 
some settlement in the waste, with fields of corn 
standing round it, and these were harvested for 
Nearchus and sent with sheep and dates, all fastened 
together and sealed with the King's seal, to the water- 
side to await the ships. So hungry were the sol- 
diers, however, that they broke the seals and fed, 
nor did Alexander, when he came to hear of it, dream 
of punishing them, for he knew that only despair had 
led them to do it. No army had ever passed by this 
route before, unless it was that of Cyrus, said to have 
been destroyed in an attempt to traverse Southern 
Gedrosia; and the legendary Semiramis had gone 
this way when she had fled from India. Nothing that 
the army had undergone before came up to its suffer- 
ings here. The heat and drought destroyed the 
greater part of it and most of the beasts of burden. 
The scorching sand being intolerable, the marches 
were usually made in the night time, but owing to 
the scarcity of water they were often of inordinate 
length, and had sometimes to be continued during 
the day. The soldiers in their hunger sometimes 
killed the beasts of burden for food and then lied about 
it. Then, for lack of animals to carry them, the sick 
had to be abandoned on the route, and no one was 
left to tend them, as the safety of the whole army was 
at stake. Those whom they deserted cursed them as 
147 



Alexander the Great 

they went, and all their precious objects, won with 
blood, had to be dropped on the desert. When they 
found water, many of them drank themselves to 
death. Looking back in after-days this journey 
seemed like some terrible nightmare. It was in the 
Mekran that Alexander performed one of the most 
notably generous acts of his life — and it was seldom 
that he was not ready to make some generous sacrifice 
for a friend. He cared so much for big things that he 
was more ready than St Martin to give away his merely 
personal possessions, and would take a wonderful 
amount of trouble to do some little service for any- 
body. He was now leading his army on foot, so as 
to encourage the infantry, and was in great distress 
from thirst, when some soldiers came running up 
with a little water which they had collected in a 
helmet from an exhausted spring. In the sight of 
the whole army, looking at him with wolfish faces, 
the King poured out the water on the ground, and 
the army felt as refreshed as though each man had 
received a draught of it. The whole route, however, 
was strewn with their dead bodies, the pest coming 
to the aid of hunger and thirst. One night the 
swelling of a brook swept away most of the women 
and children who followed the camp. One awful 
day arrived when the guides confessed that they had 
lost trace of the route, and Alexander made for the 
left without knowing how far he might be from the 
sea. Advancing with a few horsemen, he soon came 
to the coast, where he found some fresh water, and 
the guides were again familiar with the way. 

At Pura, the capital of Gedrosia, the army arrived 
in the late autumn of 325 B.C., and rested and 
148 



The Return to Susa 

refreshed itself, its fearful labours now indeed over. 
Here Alexander came again into touch with the West, 
which he had left so long ago. Viceroys and generals 
with their armies arrived from the various satrapies 
of Asia to pay their court and bring the King fresh 
supplies and troops. Accusations of tyranny and 
extortion flowed in against these viceroys, and those 
against whom wrong-doing was proved were put to 
death, for Alexander was determined that the con- 
quered races should be contented under his rule. He 
heard also that one of the governors whom he had 
left in India had been murdered by the natives, but 
that the rising had been put down. 

Through Kirman, by a route of about four hundred 
miles in length, the Macedonian army now proceeded 
in a very different fashion from that in which it 
had painfully crossed Gedrosia. Ptolemy and Aristob- 
ulus, the two best historians of this period, made no 
mention of Bacchic revehy, but tradition said that 
Alexander and his friends lay prone in richly be- 
dizened coaches; the soldiery, merry with wine, like 
the officers, played the flute and danced along in 
garlands; while the towns through which this Diony- 
siac procession passed wore the gayest decorations. 
Craterus met the party and soon they entered the 
home province of Persis. Susa was still five hundred 
miles away, but the Macedonians might consider that 
they were back once more in the realms of civilization. 
In Persis Alexander found that revolts had broken 
out, and the execution of a few magnates was neces- 
sary. At Pasargadse the King was angered by the 
damage done to the tomb of Cyrus, whom, after 
Achilles, he honoured. Guarded by Magi, Cyrus 
149 



Alexander the Great 

lay buried in a golden coffin, with purple raiment and 
precious stones piled on a rich couch in the tomb, but 
the tomb had been pillaged and the corpse cast out 
of the coffin. Torture extracted from the Magi no 
information as to the malefactors, and Alexander 
was forced to content himself with commissioning 
Aristobulus to restore his hero's grave. He caused 
the old inscription to be cut again in Greek char- 
acters below the old one. It ran : " O man, whosoever 
thou art, and from whencesoever thou comest (for I 
know thou wilt come), I am Cyrus, the founder of the 
Persian Empire; do not grudge me this little earth 
that covers my body." The ruins of this simple 
edifice are still to be seen on the plain of Murgab, 
where a winged effigy of Cyrus exists on one of the 
pillars. The viceroy of Persis was hanged, and the 
valiant and faithful Peucestas was made viceroy in 
his stead. Peucestas even better than Hephsestion 
understood and liked the Persians. He preferred 
the Median to the Greek dress, and spoke Persian 
like a native. As the King approached his capital 
Harpalus, the Treasurer, fled, hiring a band of six 
thousand soldiers and taking with him to Greece, 
where he thought he would be safest from Alexander, 
five thousand talents of the public money left in his 
charge. From Pasargadse and Persepolis Alexander 
went on to Susa, where he arrived in the spring of 
324 B.C. 

Nearchus, meanwhile, had set sail from the mouth 
of the Indus in October, and hugged the shore, land- 
ing at various places along the coast, and suffering 
severely from lack of water and provisions, but keep- 
ing in touch with Alexander and arriving safely at 
150 



The Return to Susa 

the journey's end, although he narrowly escaped 
missing the Persian Gulf and passing out of ken 
down the coast of Africa. He landed at the fertile 
Ormuz (Harmozeia) and, dirty and starving, his men 
were rejoicing in the fruits of the earth when they 
met a Greek who proved to be one of Alexander's 
soldiers. Nearchus and Archias in their rags went 
inland to visit the King, who could scarcely recognize 
them, and was overjoyed at the success of a voyage 
to which he attached so much importance; among 
other things he would be able to avoid many of the 
terrible land marches, which were so costly in lives, 
in future. He warmly commended the fleet and 
bade it continue its course along the Persian Gulf and 
up the river to Susa, a task which Nearchus success- 
fully accomplished. 



15^ 



CHAPTER XII: The Last 
Two Years (324-323 b.c.) 

T[E city of Susa lies in the fruitful plain of 
Elam, bordered by low, bleak hills. It was 
from fifteen to twenty miles in circumfer- 
ence and rich and populous. In the columned halls 
of Darius, with its quaint capitals and the richly 
treated lotus of its enamelled bricks, Alexander 
held his great Marriage-Feast. At last he definitely 
refused to be a Macedonian conqueror and took up the 
position of an Asiatic king; and in the same way as 
he had adopted Ammon as his father to conciliate 
the Egyptians, and married Roxane to win over the 
Bactrians, so now he wedded Statira (also called 
Barsine), the eldest daughter of Darius, and would, it 
was to be hoped, become ancestor of a king of Asia 
in whom the Achsemenid blood should flow. His 
favourite, Hephsestion, married Statira's sister; 
Craterus took a daughter of Oxathres, brother of 
Darius; Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Eumenes, Nearchus, 
Seleucus and other Companions to the number of 
eighty received wives from noble Persian or Median 
houses. The weddings were celebrated at Susa in 
324 B.C. in the Persian manner. Seats were placed 
in a row for the bridegrooms, and, after the banquet, 
the brides came into the hall and seated themselves, 
each one near her own husband. The King took his 
bride by the right hand and kissed her, and all the 
other bridegrooms followed his example. Then each 
led his bride away, and to each Alexander gave a 
dowiy. Ten thousand Macedonians of lower rank 
followed this example set them from above, married 
Asiatic women, and received presents from the King. 
152 



The Last Two Years 

Imitating Persian customs, Alexander, who had now 
two wives, married a third, Parysatis, daughter of 
Ochus. 

These mixed marriages caused no unfavourable 
comment in the army. On the contrary, they are 
said to have been the most popular thing Alexander 
ever instituted. At Susa, too, the soldiers who had 
suffered so much received splendid rewards. They 
had lost or squandered their booty, and a large 
number of them had got heavily into debt. This 
came to the King's ears, and he ordered that a list 
should be made of how much each man owed, an- 
nouncing that he would pay it. At first only a few 
gave these unpleasant statistics, as many imagined 
that the King was merely trying to find out about 
their manner of living. When Alexander learned this 
fact and its reason, he reproached the army for its 
mistrust of him, caused tables heaped with gold to 
be placed in the camp, and allowed debtors to receive 
the amounts of their debts without registering their 
names. Money to the amount of three or four million 
pounds was distributed in this way, besides large 
sums now given to each soldier according to the ser- 
vices he had performed in the King's wars. Those 
who received golden chaplets for personal gallantry 
were Peucestas, who held the shield over Alexander 
when he was wounded among the Malli, and Leon- 
natus who had distinguished himself on that and other 
occasions; Nearchus, who had successfully conducted 
the ocean voyage; Onesicritus, the pilot of the royal 
ship; Hephsestion, the favourite; and the remaining 
body-guards, increased in number from seven to eight 
by the inclusion of Peucestas. 
153 



Alexander the Great 

Puffed up with pride and their pockets full of money, 
the Macedonians now received a severe blow. They 
had not understood the tendency of the marriages, 
never looking a yard before them, but the King's 
next act was clear for all to see. Alexander had 
realized that the Persians and Asiatics generally were 
not bad fighting material; he may have suspected 
that these long-suffering fatalistic peoples could rise 
when led by a commander like himself to a warlike 
excellence that would leave even Macedonians be- 
hind. When he had left Persis in 330 he had set in 
hand the training of the boys of the conquered races, 
who were to be drilled in military discipline after the 
Macedonian fashion and armed in the Macedonian 
way. Now thirty thousand youths, the first-fruits 
of the new system, were brought by the viceroys to 
swell the Macedonian army. These smart soldiers 
excited the jealousy of the veterans, and their wrath 
knew no bounds when Bactrian, Sogdian, Areian, 
Arachotian, Drangian, and Parthian horsemen, dis- 
tinguished for stature, strength, skill or courage, were 
admitted into the Companion cavalry, the head- 
quarters of the Macedonian aristocracy, and Asiatic 
grandees were made officers in the army on an equal 
footing with Macedonian officers. The Macedonians 
whispered that the King thought as much of the 
Asiatics as of his own old troops, and went about 
nursing their grievance; but worse was to follow. 

After a short stay at Susa, Alexander sent He- 
phsestion with the main body of the infantry by 
land to the Persian Gulf and followed by river, 
sailing down the Eulseus (the Kara Su) to the sea, 
that stream, which now enters the Shat-el-Arab, then 
154 



The Last Two Years 

jBowmg independently to the ocean. Thence he 
sailed along the coast to the Tigris, which he had 
caused to be made navigable as far as Opis. The 
Persians had made weirs in the stream to prevent a 
naval invasion, and Alexander caused them to be 
destroyed, calling them base precautions — a reason 
as childish as the one he gave for not attacking 
Darius by night at Gaugamela. The ease with 
which he demolished the precautions suggests that he 
deemed them a false security. He went up the Tigris 
as far as Opis, where he left the stream for the land 
journey to Ecbatana, but before striking eastward he 
assembled the Macedonians and declared his intention 
of sending back to their homes the aged and disabled, 
promising to enrich them so as to make them the envy 
and object-lesson of all. The veterans must have 
suffered a cruel blow when they knew that they were 
not to march back to their homes under the King's 
standard, and perhaps Alexander was not surprised 
when those who had raised the loudest cry of 
*'Home!" along the route, now burst out into bitter 
reviling of him when he set them free to go, and was 
ready to have them conducted back to Macedonia. 
But besides their wish to wait for the King at this 
point, this seemed the final act of Macedonian 
supersession by Medes. ''Discharge us all," the 
Macedonians cried in the fury of their wrath, "and 
go and fight with your father Ammon's help!" 

Easily roused as Alexander had become, this speech 
stung him in his turn to fury. It showed how the 
soldiers who had accompanied him over the world 
misunderstood him and his position; and as they 
could not comprehend, so he would not allow them 
155 



Alexander the Great 

to question. He at once leaped down from the plat- 
form on which he stood, pointed to the chief rebels, 
and ordered their arrest. His guards seized the 
mutineers, thirteen in number, who were led away 
to execution. A terrified silence had fallen, and Alex- 
ander, remounting the platform, made an eloquent 
and touching speech. His father Philip, he told them, 
had found the Macedonians vagabonds and destitute, 
most of them clad in hides, feeding a few sheep on the 
mountain sides, and constantly dreading the incursions 
of the Illyrians, Triballians, and Thracians. Instead 
of hides he gave them cloaks to wear. He led them 
down from the mountains into the plains, instructed 
them in the arts of war and life and made them rulers 
over the very barbarians whom they had hitherto 
feared. He had added the greater part of Thrace 
to Macedonia, seized ports and secured the gold 
mines to the Macedonians. He had conquered 
Thessaly and humbled Greece. "These were the 
advantages which accrued to you from my father 
Philip; great indeed if looked at by themselves, but 
small if compared with those you have obtained from 
me. For though I inherited from my father only a 
few gold and silver goblets, and there were not even 
sixty talents in the treasury, and though I found my- 
self charged with a debt of five hundred talents owing 
by Philip, and I was obliged myself to borrow eight 
hundred talents in addition to these, I started from 
the country which could not decently support you, 
and forthwith laid open to you the passage of the 
Hellespont, though at that time the Persians held the 
sovereignty of the sea. Having overpowered the 
viceroys of Darius with my cavahy, I added to your 
156 



The Last Two Years 

empire the whole of Ionia, the whole of yEolis, both 
Phrygias, and Lydia, and I took Miletus by siege. 
All the other places I gained by voluntary surrender, 
and I granted you the privilege of appropriating the 
wealth found in them. The riches of Egypt and 
Cyrene, which I acquired without fighting a battle, 
have come to you. Coelo-Syria, Palestine and Meso- 
potamia are yoiu' property. Babylon, Bactra, and 
Susa are yours. The wealth of the Lydians, the 
treasures of the Persians, and the riches of the Indians 
are yours; and so is the External Sea. You are vice- 
roys, you are generals, you are captains. What then 
have I reserved to myself after all these labours, 
except this purple robe and this diadem .f* I have ap- 
propriated nothing myself, nor can anyone point out 
my treasures, except these possessions of yours or 
the things which I am guarding on your behalf. . . . 
I feed on the same fare as you do, and I take only the 
same amount of sleep. Nay, I do not think that my 
fare is as good as that of those among you who live 
luxuriously; and I know that I often sit up at night 
to watch for you, that you may be able to sleep. But 
some one may say that, while you endured toil and 
fatigue, I have acquired these things as your leader 
without myseK sharing the toil and fatigue. But who 
is there of you who knows that he has endured greater 
toil for me than I have for him? Come now! who- 
ever of you has wounds let him strip and show them, 
and I will show mine in turn; for there is no part of 
my body, in front at any rate, remaining free from 
wounds; nor is there any kind of weapon used either 
for close combat or for hurling at the enemy, the traces 
of which I do not bear on my person. For I have been 
157 



Alexander the Great 

wounded with the sword in close fight, I have been 
shot with arrows, and I have been struck with missiles 
projected from engines of war; and though oft- 
times I have been hit with stones and bolts of wood 
for the sake of your lives, your glory and your wealth, 
I am still leading you as conquerors over all the land 
and sea, all rivers, mountains and plains. I have 
celebrated your weddings with my own, and the 
children of many of you will be akin to my children. 
Moreover, I have liquidated the debts of all those 
who had incurred them, without enquiring too closely 
for what purpose they were contracted, though you 
receive such high pay, and carry off so much booty 
whenever there is booty to be got after a siege. Many 
of you have golden crowns, the eternal memorials of 
your valour and of the honour you receive from me. 
Whoever has been killed has met with a glorious 
end and has been honoured with a splendid burial. 
Brazen statues of most of the slain have been erected 
at home, and their parents are held in honour, being 
released from all public service and from taxation. 
But no one of you has ever been killed in flight under 
my leadership. And now I was intending to send 
back those of you who are unfit for service, objects of 
envy to those at home; but since you all wish to 
depart, depart all of you! Go back and report at 
home that your king, Alexander, the conqueror of 
the Persians, Medes, Bactrians, and Sacians; the man 
who has subjugated the Uxians, Arachotians and 
Drangians; who has also acquired the rule of the 
Parthians, Chorasmians and Hyrcanians, as far as the 
Caspian Sea; who has marched over the Caucasus, 
through the Caspian Gates; who has crossed the 
158 



The Last Two Years 

rivers Oxus and Tanais, and the Indus besides, 
which has never been crossed by anyone else except 
Dionysus; who has also crossed the Hydaspes, 
Acesines and Hydraotis, and who would have crossed 
the Hyphasis if you had not shrunk back with alarm; 
who has penetrated into the Great Sea by both the 
mouths of the Indus; who has marched through the 
desert of Gedrosia, where no one ever before marched 
with an army; who on his route acquired possession 
of Kirman and the land of the Oritians, in addition to 
his other conquests, his fleet having in the meantime 
already sailed round the coast of the sea which ex- 
tends from India to Persia — ^Report that when you 
returned to Susa you deserted him and went away, 
handing him over to the protection of conquered 
foreigners. Perhaps this report of yours will be both 
glorious to you in the eyes of men and devout for- 
sooth in the eyes of the gods. Depart!" 

This speech, or the words that have come down to 
us in the form of this speech, was the nearest Alexander 
ever came to a justification of his life. At its close he 
leaped down quickly from the platform and entered 
the palace, where he remained in seclusion as on the 
banks of the Hyphasis, not admitting the Com- 
panions and paying no heed to the adornment of his 
person. On the third day he summoned the chief 
Persians and distributed the commands of the army 
among them. Persian "Kinsmen" — a Persian title 
of special honour, — a Persian f ootguard, Persian foot 
Companions, a Persian regiment of Argyraspids, 
Persian cavalry Companions and another cavahy 
regiment, were all armed in the Macedonian way. 
To these soldiers Alexander spoke of the recent inter- 
159 



Alexander the Great 

marriage of Persians and Macedonians, and praised 
the Asiatic soldier as a brave and desirable subject. 
*' Henceforth," he said, "consider yourselves members 
of my people, not only of my army. Asia and Europe 
are one and the same kingdom, and I give you Mace- 
donian armour. I have abolished all distinctions 
and you are both my citizens and my soldiers. Shades 
of race have been obliterated and Macedonian may 
freely imitate Persian and Persian Macedonian: for 
those who live under the same king ought to be under 
the same law." Statesmanship, tolerance, a Roman 
fairness of mind, appear in Alexander's treatment of 
the subject peoples, and seemed to promise a fair 
future to the world over which he ruled. His wars, 
like those of the Romans, seemed to be the inaugura- 
tion of a long peace. But just when the world was 
ceasing to be restive under its new ruler, he was taken 
away, and there was no one to maintain his empire. 
Meanwhile the Macedonians, too abashed to run 
after the King as he left the hall, were gathered 
mourning at the palace gates, where they had cast 
down their weapons as a token of submission and 
supplication. Shame had fallen on them as he 
spoke, for they had a sudden insight into the aims of 
a greater nature than their own, and they remem- 
bered that he had suffered far more than they had. 
They besought to be allowed to enter, offered to give 
him scapegoats, and called out that they would die 
if the King persisted in his resentment; for no ruler 
has ever inspired stronger personal attachment. 
When he heard his soldiers' cries, Alexander at once 
appeared and found them humbly prostrated on the 
ground, lamenting loudly; and he also wept. Their 
1 60 



The Last Two Years 

entreaties against his new arrangements drowned the 
words he attempted to speak, and he allowed CalUnes, 
captain of the Companion cavahy, to become their 
spokesman. Callines was instructed to tell the King 
that the only thing that grieved them was the creation 
of Persian Kinsmen, who had the honour of saluting 
Alexander with a kiss, whereas none of the Mace- 
donians had yet received this honour. 

"But," interrupted Alexander, "I consider you all 
my kinsmen, and so from this time I shall call you.'* 

Thereupon, Callines advanced and saluted him 
with a kiss, and all those who wished to do so followed 
his example. Then they picked up their weapons 
and returned to the camp, shouting and singing a 
hymn of thanksgiving to Apollo, the god of recon- 
ciliation. Alexander made special sacrifices and gave 
a public banquet, where the Macedonians sat n,earest 
to him, the Persians next, and great men of other 
nations afterward. The King and his guests drew 
wine from the same bowl and poured out the same 
libations, religious matters being seen to by Greek 
priests and Magi equally. Alexander solemnly prayed 
the gods to establish concord among the many nations 
represented under his roof, and, after apsean of thanks- 
giving to Apollo, the nine thousand guests, drawn 
from nearly all the tribes of Western Asia and Eastern 
Europe, streamed out in friendship into the night. 

The disabled and outworn Macedonians returned 
home of their own free will, to the number of about 
ten thousand, receiving as viaticum one talent each 
beyond their pay, and that seems to have been all, 
except that the King gave them a recommendation to 
Antipater that when they came home, at all public 
i6i 



Alexander the Great 

shows and in the theatres, they should sit in the best 
seats, crowned with garlands; and the children of 
those who had lost their lives in his service were to 
have their father's pay continued to them. They 
were not allowed to take home their Asiatic wives 
and children for fear of the anger of the Macedonian 
women. The King, to whom boys were a future 
army, was glad to have the chance of bringing them 
up in the camp, for the children of the camp always 
made the best soldiers, and became responsible for 
these children, promising to bring them to Macedonia 
when they grew up. It is to be hoped that this army 
of infants was not thrown helpless on the world at his 
death. Alexander kissed and wept over the depart- 
ing soldiers, whom he sent home under Craterus, ap- 
pointed to supersede Antipater as governor of Mace- 
donia, Thrace, and Thessaly, and President of Greece. 
Antipater, who had been regent in Macedonia all 
this long time, had quarreled bitterly with Alex- 
ander's mother, Olympias, whom nobody could sup- 
port; and, perhaps, Alexander thought that Antipater 
had enjoyed royal power at the nominal seat of empire 
too long. Craterus, an old-fashioned Macedonian, 
was well suited to the task of ruling at home, and was, 
moreover, no longer strong enough for the camp. 
Antipater was to join Alexander, bringing with him 
ten thousand fresh Macedonian soldiers to make up 
for the ten thousand sent home. On the way back 
Craterus was directed to obtain a large fleet in 
Phoenicia for an expedition against Carthage and 
other Libyan powers, to raise various temples of large 
size and to transplant certain European and Asiatic 
peoples, as Americans of our own time have dealt 
162 



The Last Two Years 

with the Red Indians. Craterus had only got as far 
as CiKcia on the return journey when Alexander died, 
and these great schemes were never carried out. 

Alexander, as the Persian kings were accustomed 
to do, spent the late summer and autumn of 
342 B.C. at Ecbatana, and took his fill of festivity; 
wine parties and gymnastic, musical, and theat- 
rical shows occupied day and night. Engaging 
too much in these pursuits, Hephsestion, the 
young Adonis of the army, fell sick of a fever. He was 
loved by the King as men of Doric race, like the 
Argives of Homer's time or the young Spartans 
described by Plato, loved their friends, and his loss 
was the greatest sorrow of this kind in Alexander's 
life. It was on the seventh day of Hephsestion's ill- 
ness, when the King was watching the contest of some 
boys in the stadium, that news was brought to him 
that his general was dying. He hastened to his 
bedside, but Hephaestion had passed away, and 
Alexander threw himseK upon the corpse in an 
agony of grief. It was a long time before he could 
be dragged away, and he lay on the ground for three 
days, refusing food or the bath, and bewailing his 
dead comrade. Many thought his abandonment un- 
kingly, but Alexander had modelled his character as 
far as he might on the character of Achilles, and this 
was the way Achilles had behaved upon the death of 
Patroclus. Like Achilles, Alexander shaved his head, 
and strewed his locks upon the tomb of his friend, 
and, like Achilles, he revenged himself upon the au- 
thors of his friend's death, the physician and Ascle- 
pius. The physician was hanged and the god's temple 
at Ecbatana razed to the ground, while the Cossseans, 
163 



Alexander the Great 

who rebelled at this time, formed a convenient offer- 
ing on a grand scale to his comrade's shade. Perhaps 
the tales of the extravagances of his sorrow owe 
something to popular invention. Universal mourning 
was, however, decreed in the empire, and two million 
pounds were spent on the pyre erected at Babylon. 
Little did Alexander imagine that the three thousand 
players he engaged to perform in Hephaestion's 
honour would serve for his own funeral games. While 
Peucestas took the corpse to Babylon, Alexander, 
accompanied by Ptolemy, made his last campaign, in 
the depth of the winter, against the revolted Cossseans. 
The Persian kings used to bribe these wild tribes of 
the hills to the north-east of Susiana to leave the 
empire in peace, but Alexander drove them away from 
their strongholds for ever in his six weeks' progress. 
As he turned his face southward toward Babylon, am- 
bassadors met him from various nations of the West. 
His troops were awaited in fear by the Scyth- 
ians, Iberians, and Celts of northern Europe and 
Spain, by the Etruscans, Bruttians, and Lucanians 
of Italy, by the Ethiopians and Carthaginians of 
Africa; and representatives from all these peoples 
appeared in Asia to seek his alliance. An untrust- 
worthy tradition relates that Rome sent envoys, but 
we do not even know if the future conqueror of the 
world had heard of Alexander. 

The King then sent shipwrights to Hyrcania to 
build a fleet for exploring the Caspian, which he 
thought might turn out, as the Persian Gulf had, to 
be an arm of the ocean, for its northern shores were 
quite unknown. For himself he was busily preparing 
the Arabian expedition. 

164 



The Last Two Years 

As Alexander approached Babylon, something 
occurred which damped the spirits of the army and 
was not pleasant to the King. The Chaldaeans (the 
seers and prophets of Babylon) came out to meet him 
with the warning that his entry into this city would 
be fraught with the greatest disaster to him. Alex- 
ander replied with a scoffing line from Euripides, but 
consented when the Chaldaeans prayed him that he 
would at least enter the city by the western gate. 
Like many another brave soldier, Alexander probably 
believed in omens and portents, but it was considered 
cowardly by the best Greek and Roman leaders to 
retreat when the auspices were unfavourable. The 
King nevertheless turned about and advanced along 
the Euphrates, with the stream on his right hand, but 
coming to rough and marshy ground, over which it 
was impossible to proceed, he abandoned the attempt 
to reach the western gate. He had begun to wonder 
whether the Chaldaeans were tools in the hands of a 
party who wished to keep him out of the city, or had 
been tampering with the funds which he had given 
for the building of temples. Bel's, however, was far 
from being a solitary voice. Shortly before the death 
of Hephsestion, a Macedonian diviner had predicted 
his death and the King's from the absence of a lobe 
on the liver of a sacrificial victim offered in reference 
to each. The same man afterward acted as diviner 
for Perdiccas and for Antigonus, and the same evil 
omen preceded the deaths of those commanders. 
Then, again, when Calanus, an Indian philosopher 
who had accompanied Alexander back to Susa, per- 
sisted in ending his infirmities, and was burned alive 
in great state, he refused, before the assembled army. 



Alexander the Great 

to say farewell to Alexander. He should soon meet 
and greet him, he said, in Babylon. Into the fatal 
city, with his face in an unlucky direction, Alexander 
entered in February or March 323 B.C., and for long 
it seemed as if nothing would happen. 

Ambassadors from Greece were given audience; 
they congratulated and crowned the King, and were 
allowed to take back to Greece all the objects which 
Xerxes had carried away, including the bronze 
statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the Athenian 
Liberators. Not only did the King find at Babylon 
the fleet of Nearchus, the hero of the hour, but there 
had arrived also Phoenician ships which had been 
taken to pieces and conveyed overland through 
Phoenicia to Thapsacus, there reconstructed and 
brought down the Euphrates to Babylon. Dock- 
yards were built, and other vessels were made from 
the abundant cypress trees of Babylonia. A harbour 
large enough to hold a thousand men-of-war was 
formed near Babylon. Phoenician purple-fishers and 
multitudes of other sea-faring men from that coast 
were brought over to the Persian Gulf, the shores of 
which were to be colonized with a nautical population, 
an,d, it was believed, would speedily equal Phoenicia 
in commercial activity. Few statesmen have shown 
the aptitude for remoulding a nation that Alexander 
showed for remoulding the world. His next step 
would have been to subjugate Arabia, whence there 
had come no embassy to seek his friendship. Various 
pilots were sent to coast Arabia until they arrived at 
Egypt, but all returned after cruising in fear for 
various distances along the Arabian coast. The tales 
of Araby still enjoyed too much credence in the Greek 
i66 



The Last Two Years 

mind; moreover, the fleets of that time had no idea 
of provisioning for any long period, and so dared not 
proceed far along the shore of the Arabian desert. 
They must by this time have got from the natives 
some idea of its extent. 

Alexander was now to leave Babylon for a short 
time, and as nothing had yet happened to him, he was 
persuaded that the oracles of Bel had been terrifying 
him vainly. The business that drew him away was 
the affair of the Pallacopas Canal. This canal had 
been constructed to receive the overflow of the 
Euphrates after the melting of the Armenian snows 
in the spring-time, but when the river sank back into 
its bed the purpose of the canal was served and there 
was a danger of the drying up of the stream. The 
water had therefore to be turned back from the canal 
into the river, a task which sometimes occupied ten 
thousand Assyrians for three months. Alexander 
had determined to bestow a great boon on his Asiatic 
subjects. He readily discovered that if the canal 
joined the river at a different point the water could 
easily be sent back into its channel, and he now set 
the work going. He then sailed down the canal 
toward Arabia and established a new and strongly 
fortified 'Alexandria' in that direction, colonizing 
it with outworn veterans and such Greek mercenaries 
as were willing to stay. He returned to Babylon 
lighter at heart than he had been for some time, but 
a new evil omen befell him before he entered the city. 
As he sailed through the marshes by the tombs of the 
old Assyrian kings, a gust of wind blew into the 
water his broad-brimmed hat, and his fillet fell on a 
reed. These were evil signs in themselves, but worse 
167 



Alexander the Great 

followed. A Phoenician sailor leaped into the water 
and seized the fillet, and to avoid wetting it swam 
back with it on his own head. The sailor received 
a double reward, a talent for his service and a scourg- 
ing for assuming the royal head-dress. Legend said 
that it was Seleucus, the greatest of Alexander's 
* Successors,' who thus secured the fillet, but the 
symbol did not fit so exactly. All that men thought 
at the moment was that a very bad portent had 
befallen the King. 

At Babylon Peucestas and other commanders with 
new levies awaited Alexander; the new soldiers 
were drafted into the Macedonian ranks, and reviews 
of the fleet and naval tournaments were held on the 
river. One day, when engaged in military arrange- 
ments, for he was making some fundamental changes 
in the art of war at the moment of his death, Alex- 
ander, feeling thirsty, left the room. His Council, 
sitting on couches with silver feet round the Great 
King's throne, rose as he rose and attended him, and 
during their absence a man of low condition walked 
through the line of eunuchs who guarded the throne 
and sat down on it. By Persian law he might not be 
touched in that sacred place, and the horror-struck 
oflScials stood watching him while they rent their 
garments and beat their breasts. Alexander also 
was enraged when he returned, for in the East the 
thing seemed most evil, and the man's motive was 
eagerly sought, but even torture elicited no other 
answer than that it came into his mind to do it. A 
few days later Alexander gave a banquet at which 
Nearchus was the guest of honour, and all drank far 
into the night. The King wished to withdraw atone 
i68 



The Last Two Years 

point, but his new intimate, Medius the Thessalian, 
successfully pressed him to go on to a further feast 
at his own house. Here they continued to revel, 
and on the following night Medius continued the 
feast. Again they roistered far into the night, and 
after a bath and a little food Alexander slept at the 
house of Medius, as he already felt a little feverish. 
He was carried out on a couch in the morning to 
make the sacrifices according to his daily custom, and 
then lay down in the banqueting hall at the palace 
until dusk, issuing orders for the great expedition 
southward on which he had been about to start. The 
foot-soldiers, he commanded, were to leave on the 
fourth day, and he himself would sail with the fleet 
on the fifth day. He was carried on a couch to the 
brink of the Euphrates and in a boat to the royal 
park. On the following day he again bathed and 
offered the sacrifices, lay down, chatted with Medius, 
ordered the officers to meet him at daybreak, ate 
a little and went to bed, only to toss all night with 
fever. All these details of the last days of the 
conqueror's life were preserved in the court diary, 
now lost, but used by early historians. On the follow- 
ing day Alexander directed that the fleet should be 
ready for the third day, and bathed and sacrificed, 
and this he did the next day, but became worse in the 
evening, and on the following day was conveyed to 
the house near the swimming-bath, where he could 
better carry on his priestly rites. The day after he 
could scarcely be borne out to the sacrifices, but he 
heard Nearchus' narrative of his voyage and attended 
carefully to his maritime observations, for he still 
issued orders for the new voyage, apparently not 
169 



Alexander the Great 

recognizing until the end that his course was finished, 
that the only voyage awaiting him was the one for 
which the halfpenny fare would be put in his mouth. 
On the following day he was carried back into the 
palace, and the officers were summoned; but although 
he knew them, he was speechless, and for the two 
following days and nights tossed in a high fever. 
When they heard that he was no longer able to speak, 
the Macedonians came to the palace gates and forced 
their way into the room where he lay, to find out if 
he were dead and it was being hidden from them, or 
to see him once more if he lived. As they marched 
one by one past his bedside, he greeted each with his 
right hand, raising his head with difficulty, and 
making a sign of recognition with his eyes. Python, 
Seleucus and others went to the temple of Serapis 
to inquire if they should bring him there, but the 
god answered that they should not remove him, and 
on the evening of the thirteenth of June 323 B.C., he 
died. 

Extraordinary scenes of mourning followed in 
Babylon, and not only his Macedonian subjects, but 
all the peoples of his empire, recognized that there 
had passed away one of the greatest men who have 
walked this earth. 

Some years later the story arose that Alexander 
was poisoned with poison procured for the purpose 
by Aristotle, and sent to Babylon by Antipater by 
means of his son Cassander, while his younger son 
lollas, the royal cup-bearer, actually administered 
it. Others thought that Medius and loUas carried 
out the deed. There is nothing very improbable in 
the idea of Alexander being poisoned. Some of the 
170 



The Last Two Years 

best kings have been assassinated, and it was a 
normal fate for a Macedonian ruler. Nor are we in 
a position to say that Antipater and his sons or 
Medius would not have done such a deed if it had 
suited their own ends. It was one of the times in 
which such things are freely and naturally done. 
Modern doctors, however, have agreed that Alex- 
ander's symptoms were not those of poisoning but of 
malaria. It must, in any case, have been a very slow 
poison, and, had he taken it, Alexander's body could 
hardly have remained free from corruption for seven 
days, as we are told it did; indeed, it is said, it under- 
went no change before it was embalmed. 

His body, taken to Egypt, according to his wishes, 
by Ptolemy, was ultimately placed in his city of 
Alexandria. Tradition relates that the Companions 
asked the dying King to whom he left his sceptre, and 
that he replied, "To the best man." His ring he 
had left with Perdiccas. A wit invented a sarcastic 
prophecy of Alexander's to the effect that he knew 
there would be a great funeral contest held in 
his honour, meaning the year-long wars of his 
* Successors' for his realms. 



vn 



CHAPTER XIII: Alexander's 
Character and Place in History 

ARRIAN concludes his Anabasis of Alexander 
with an excellent summary of his qualities. 
He was of distinguished beauty of person; 
he was devoted to work, active in mind, heroic in 
courage (more so than professional bravoes, remarks 
Curtius), fond of danger, tenacious of honour, stead- 
fast in keeping agreements, strictly observant of his 
duty to the gods; of perfect self-control with regard 
to the pleasures of the body, for Aristobulus asserted 
that, though he used to hold long drinking parties, 
it was not for the purpose of enjoying the wine but 
for the mildest conviviality; he always saw what 
ought to be done and understood a situation at a 
glance, and was not liable to be taken in by im- 
postors. He was very skilful in marshalling, arming 
and ruling an army, and renowned for his power of 
rousing the courage of his soldiers. He always fore- 
stalled his enemies. Arrian judged that in the things 
of the mind Alexander was only insatiable of praise. 
He committed many errors from the quickness of his 
temper, but allowances were to be made for his youth, 
his uninterrupted success, and the evil advisers that 
always strive to corrupt kings; moreover, Alexander 
was the only ancient king of whom repentance, due 
to his nobility of character, was recorded. Tracing 
his origin to a god was perhaps a device to make his 
subjects show him reverence, nor did he seem less 
renowned than Minos, Ajax, Rhadamanthus and 
others who had done the same — it was merely a 
Greek national failing. His assumption of the 
172 



Character and Place in History 

Persian dress was a political device. Let the de- 
tractor, says Arrian, in words that are as useful for 
life as they are for historical criticism (perhaps more 
so), turn his eyes on himself and consider on what 
petty objects he spends his own life, not effecting 
them petty as they are. 

Arrian never seems to consider the chief point that 
arises in the modern mind. The modern question 
has become: What was Alexander's excuse for 
troubling the world? He has sometimes been con- 
sidered as a vulgar freebooter who *'did mischief 
enough to be called a great man," sometimes like a 
madman, the madman who destroyed the temple at 
Ephesus, crazed by his vanity. His invasion of Asia 
has often been treated in this light, and the Mace- 
donian subjugation of Greece has often been regarded 
as if it were analogous to Turkish rule there. It is 
only in the last few decades that justice has been 
done to Alexander as a man and a statesman, although 
in 1857 Freeman raised an eloquent voice for him. 
His vindication depends on the motives which under- 
lay his actions, since he did not live long enough for 
those actions to justify themselves; and it seems 
probable that Philip and Alexander understood the 
political situation of Greece better than we can do 
after the lapse of over twenty-three centuries, and 
that if they considered the unification of Greece and 
the conquest of Persia a political necessity, it was 
one — at the worst, it was one for Macedonia. 

Alexander especially had a grasp of a situation 
given to few mortals. People are fond of represent- 
ing Persian power as in its decline when he led his 
army over the Hellespont, but Alexander considered 
173 



Alexander the Great 

Persian soldiers as good as Greeks; after his conquest 
was completed he enrolled the so-called 'effeminate 
Asiatics' in his choicest regiments in place of 
veteran Macedonians, and informed them that he 
had found them in every way equal to his best and 
bravest fellow-countrymen. It was merely training 
and leadership that they required, and Philip and 
Alexander probably realized that if another Cyrus 
or Darius the Great arose in Persia, Macedonia and 
Greece would become at one blow a Persian satrapy. 
It was all very well for the southern Greeks to sit 
secure, but Macedonia had known the disgrace of 
Persian conquest. Greece, moreover, was no longer 
the country which had repelled Darius and Xerxes 
at Marathon and Salamis. The ease with which she 
was overrun by the Macedonians demonstrates her 
danger from any strong and determined foe. It was 
decided, therefore, to choose this moment when the 
Persian Empire, weakened by years of internal dis- 
sension and now under no outstanding leader, was 
vulnerable, and crush it under the heel of Greece. 
An invasion of Greece by Persia might never have 
taken place, but other great peoples were to pour 
over Greece. If the political prophet had looked far 
enough forward he might have seen the Celtic in- 
roads of the third century B.C. and the Roman 
domination of the second century B.C. Macedonia, 
thanks to Philip and Alexander, was some bulwark 
against the Celts, although Alexander's early death 
was fatal to the work which Macedonia had started. 
As to Macedonian destruction of the Greek city- 
state system, and with it the best life of Greece, 
Athens herself had twice wronged this institution 
174 



Character and Place in History 

by the formation of empires; and other Greek cities 
had established federations in which they tampered 
with individual independence. Pericles, prime min- 
ister in the day of Athens* greatness, bade her 
preserve her empire at whatever cost of injustice 
toward the cities over which she tyrannized. Nor 
had Athens sinned only against the city-state; her 
democracy had often shown itself unworthy of its 
great citizens. Nor in the time of Philip and Alex- 
ander were her citizens so great as they had been; 
at the worst the Macedonians seem to have hastened 
the end of what was in its decline. From our modern 
vantage point we see that the nation was bound to 
come; that it needed a foreign invader at the gates 
of Thermopylae to bring about any concerted action 
in Greece; and that unity from within meant too 
long a process for the world to wait for. Again and 
again the brilliant peoples of Greece had refused 
to submit to each other's hegemony, so at last the 
yoke was imposed by one whom they considered a 
foreigner. 

The strong Macedonian state which Alexander and 
his father established on the north of Greece saved 
Greece from barbarian conquest until the Romans 
were ready to take the place of Macedonia as pro- 
tectors of civilization. Through Alexander's journeys 
early Christian literature was enriched with Greek 
thought, and Christianity spread over the world 
more quickly through his work. He was a great 
cosmopolitan influence, the first in history, and, 
despite the strangeness of the idea to the men of his 
time, he did not labour entirely in vain to unite East 
and West. To his Egyptian province we owe much 
175 



Alexander the Great 

of our knowledge of the Greeks. He is the link 
between the modern and the ancient world, the hinge 
on which European history turns, as well as a brilliant 
figure in the pageant of history. 

No sooner was Alexander the Great dead than his 
'Romance' began to be spun; indeed his life as it 
stood constituted both romance and history. From 
the romantic point of view it is a story of wars and 
wanderings that make it a second Iliad and Odyssey, 
of which Alexander is the Achilles and Odysseus. 
If there had been a second Homer, as Alexander some- 
times vainly wished, to sing of this greater attack on 
Asia, he would have found many points of resemblance 
in his new hero to the 'best of all the Greeks.* The 
characters of the Iliad always enter with some de- 
scriptive epithet, such as * white-armed Hera,* 
*Menelaus of the Loud War Cry'; and Alexander, 
the swiftest runner of his time, would have been the 
new 'fleet-footed Achilles.' His obstinate seclusion 
at the Hyphasis and at Opis on the two occasions 
when the army revolted, compare poorly with the 
long sulking of Achilles in his tent, but the wrath of 
Alexander fell little short of the 'wrath of Achilles.' 
In the year of the conqueror's death, when his great 
friend Hepheestion fell sick and died, the revenge which 
Alexander is supposed to have taken and the funeral 
celebration he arranged recall Achilles' dragging of 
Hector round the walls of Troy, and the funeral 
pyre of Patroclus. This, although his 'Successors* 
and the Romans studied Alexander's doings as 
matters of importance to every general and adminis- 
trator, the story of his life soon seemed to most people 
no more than a tale. Already by the second century 
176 



Character and Place in History 

of the Christian era the Greeks had created the 
Romance of Alexander, which was very speedily- 
translated from Greek into Latin and from Latin into 
all mediaeval tongues. With the Roman de Troie, the 
story of Alexander formed the chief part of the 
French Classical Cycle of mediaeval romances, among 
which are the famous Li Romans d' Alexandre, from 
which the term 'alexandrines' in prosody takes its 
name, and Le Roman de toute chevalerie, the parent of 
the English King Alisaunder, a rougher and cruder 
precursor of Spenser's Fairy Queen. In this wonderful 
fairy story 

King Philip sat in his hall 
Among earls and barons all, 

and dubbed Alexander knight. In the wilds of the 
East, a palmer brings Alexander a herb to heal the 
sickness of his army: 

It was an angel, so saith the book. 
That the king the herbe took. 

Finally, Alexander and Porus, wandering over plains, 
dales, wildernesses and mountains to the world's 
end, come to Paradise, guarded by dragons, 

Where God Almighty, through His grace. 
Formed Adam our father that was. 

To consummate this entire neglect of any historical 
background in Alexander's story, the poets picture 
him, with the consent of his barons, intending to 
attack Germany, France, England and Ireland when 
he was diverted by a providential monster. 

With the Renaissance, however, all these delightful 
ideas about Alexander took their wing; it was some 
177 



Alexander the Great 

centuries before the romances were to be read again, 
and when at last they did come back, it was that they 
might be read for their own sakes rather than for 
their historical value. But until this day men have 
been occupied in getting rid of the legendary matter 
that still, in spite of every effort, clings to his name. 



178 



CHAPTER XIV: The 

Alexandrian Empire 

WHEN news of the King's death was borne 
out of the sick room, the ancient palace, 
built by Nebuchadnezzar's slaves and 
trodden by so many mighty kings since his time, was 
filled with the sound of mourning; but gradually a 
deep silence fell on the great generals and statesmen 
who, at the dead King's orders, had taken up their 
quarters there. Each began to ponder on what 
would befall next. Who would govern the earth in 
the place of the monarch who had just passed away? 
If any of them had already cast their eye on the 
supreme rule, they must have been planning in the 
deepest anxiety the next move in the game. The 
common soldiers remained under arms all through 
the dark night, no one daring to light a torch, and 
when eventually the Body Guards called the generals 
to a council, the soldiers all crowded round and tried 
to force their way in, determined on knowing their 
future fate. In vain a herald summoned those not 
invited to retire; an eager crowd of plebeian Mace- 
donians thronged to the door of the great hall in 
which the important dignitaries had met to decide 
the fate of the empire. Perdiccas, therefore, caused 
the throne to be carried out of the palace and placed 
in full view of the assembly, and on it were displayed 
the diadem, royal robe and armour. To this little 
heap he added the ring which the King had given 
him, and then turned to the multitude hanging 
breathlessly on his movements. 

"I restore to you," he said briefly, "the ring with 
179 



Alexander the Great 

which the King used to seal his commands and which 
he delivered to me. No greater misfortune can ever 
be sent us by the gods than the one we have suffered; 
but the gods only lent a man like Alexander for a 
short space and, his fate accomplished, they have 
carried him back to his own race. Since nothing is 
left to us but his mortal remains, let us pay what 
honour we can to his dust and name. But let us 
not forget that business of the most urgent nature 
awaits us. We need a head; whether one or more 
is for you to decide." 

All the generals then declared their opinions on 
the succession, and a stormy meeting followed. 
Perdiccas and the greater number wished to wait for 
the birth of Alexander's child by Roxane, and, if it 
was a boy, accept him as king. This child was 
Alexander *iEgus,' born a few months later. 
Nearchus, however, had a suggestion to make which 
stirred up the most violent anger. He proposed that 
Heracles, the son of Alexander and Barsine, a Persian 
woman (but not his new wife, the daughter of Darius), 
should receive the kingship. The crowd raised a 
great clamour of disapprobation, striking their lances 
on their shields, and Nearchus' proposal seemed so 
monstrous to nearly all his colleagues that the affair 
threatened to lead to blows. Ptolemy then raised 
his voice; perhaps he had already a design on a 
throne, and wished to stir up popular feeling against 
the whole royal house. 

"Does the issue of either Roxane or Barsine," he 

said, "seem worthy to rule over the Macedonian 

people? Could we mention their base names, those 

of slaves, in Europe? Why did we conquer the 

1 80 



The Alexandrian Empire 

Persians, if we are to obey their descendants? Darius 
and Xerxes, at the head of thousands of soldiers and 
with enormous fleets, in vain sought to bring us to 
such servitude. Let us place the throne in the 
palace, hold a council, vote for our futiu-e ruler, and 
abide by the voice of the majority." 

This speech fell flat, and the majority had declared 
for the plan of Perdiccas, when somebody called out 
that Alexander had bequeathed his throne to 'the 
best man, ' and by giving his ring to Perdiccas had 
pointed out Perdiccas as the best man. This was 
greeted with enthusiasm by the crowd, who called 
to Perdiccas to take the ring again, but it did not 
commend itself to the nobility. The Macedonian 
army must vote on the matter, Meleager declared 
menacingly, and a common soldier called out that 
Alexander's half-brother Arrhidaeus should be elected. 
Meleager, who was a demagogue, took up this idea, 
and the army elected this youth with the title of 
Philip III. 

Perdiccas and Ptolemy thereupon departed from 
the city, taking with them nearly all the Companion 
cavalry, who would not recognize the new king, 
wasted the surrounding country, and threatened 
Babylon with famine. Philip Arrhidaeus made a 
sorry king after Alexander, and the soldiers were 
absorbed in sad reflections when fresh disasters 
happened. The foreign population of the surround- 
ing country, in a dangerous temper through the 
ravaging of their lands by the cavalry, flocked into 
the city, which could not feed its own mouths, and 
threatened the Macedonians. They fell to quarrel- 
ling among themselves, and the young King, unable to 
i8i 



Alexander the Great 

cope with the situation, begged them with tears to 
take the kingship from him. An embassy was sent 
to Perdiccas and he returned, but he did not trust 
Meleager and his party, and caused three hundred of 
them to be trodden under foot by elephants in pres- 
ence of the whole army. This was the beginning of 
a deep feeling of hatred toward Perdiccas. For the 
moment all seemed well, but the Alexandrian Empire 
was not yet consolidated and soon toppled over like 
an uncompleted building. 

In 323 B.C. the first partition of the empire was 
made in Babylon, and although the generals among 
whom it was divided were at first nominally ministers 
of the Macedonian king, they were practically in- 
dependent, and from their viceroyalties three per- 
manent kingdoms were ultimately evolved, those of 
the Seleucidae in Asia, the Ptolemies in Egypt, and 
a new Macedonian kingdom. The history of the 
last kings of the old royal house is briefly told: Philip 
Arrhidseus, the simple tool of a faction of the nobility, 
was murdered at the instigation of Olympias in 
317 B.C.; the aged Olympias and her young grandson, 
Alexander iEgus, were murdered by Cassander, son 
of Antipater, in about 310 b.c; and with the mm'der 
of the conqueror's son, Heracles, by Polyperchon, 
the rival of Cassander, in 309 B.C., the royal Heraclid 
line of Macedonia came to an end in the male line. 

By the settlement of 323 B.C. the King was nomin- 
ally supreme ruler, with Perdiccas as regent and 
Seleucus as his assistant or *chiliarch.' Antipater, 
still in Macedonia, and Craterus, who had now arrived 
there, were to continue in control of Macedonia and 
Greece. Ptolemy was to be satrap of Egypt and 
182 



The Alexandrian Empire 

Macedonian Libya; Lysimaclius was to rule over 
Thrace and the neighbouring districts of the Euxine 
(soon to be overrun by the Celts); Antigonus and 
others divided Asia Minor; Python had Media, while 
the existing satraps were left in Sogdiana, Bactria, 
the Punjab, Gedrosia, etc. 

Antipater, although nearly eighty years of age, 
was very angry that Perdiccas and not he should 
have received the chief position in the empire, and 
speedily began to intrigue with Ptolemy and Anti- 
gonus against him, but Perdiccas was soon removed 
from the great scramble, being murdered by his 
soldiers in 321. A second arrangement was then 
made by which Antipater became regent, while 
Seleucus was appointed viceroy of Babylonia. Anti- 
pater, however, died two years later, having be- 
queathed the regency to Polyperchon, not, as would 
have been more natural, to his own son Cassander. 
This caused a war which resulted in Cassander de- 
feating his rival, clearing all claimants to the throne* 
out of his path by murder, and ultimately assum- 
ing the title of king. He made Macedonia his 
headquarters and exercised practically uncontested 
rule there. He married Thessalonica, half-sister of 
Alexander the Great, and built Salonica, which he 
named after her. With his accession Macedonia 
relapsed from its position as head of an empire and 
became a simple kingdom again. The house of 
Antipater ruled over Macedonia until 294 B.C., when 
it was overturned by Demetrius, son of Antigonus; 
from 277 to 149 B.C. the Antigonids reigned; and in 
149 B.C. Roman intervention culminated, after the 
battle of Pydna, in the annexation of Macedonia 
183 



Alexander the Great 

by Rome. Thenceforth Macedonia was a Roman 
province. 

After the death of Perdiccas, and bitter wars, 
Antigonus, whose descendants were to rule in 
Macedonia, made himself predominant in Asia, and 
threatened Cassander in Macedonia and Ptolemy in 
Egypt. Seleucus, whom he drove out of Babylonia, 
took refuge with Ptolemy, and a general coalition was 
formed against Antigonus. In 312 B.C. Seleucus was 
restored to his rule, and in 301 B.C. Antigonus (aged 
eighty-one) was defeated and slain at Ipsus. He 
had been the first of the * Successors' to assume the 
title of king (in 306 B.C.), and it was in imitation 
of him that Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and 
Lysimachus promptly did the same. 

After the death of Antigonus, Lysimachus was the 
chief opponent of Seleucus in Asia, and Lysimachus, 
too, was slain in 281 B.C., leaving him without a rival; 
and he soon established his rule from the yEgean Sea 
to the Jaxartes and Indus. He founded the great 
dynasty of the Seleucidae, who maintained Greek 
influence in the East for over two centuries. Their 
realm was not equivalent to the Asiatic kingdom of 
Alexander the Great; India never permitted Greek 
troops to recross her streams, and Bactria and 
Sogdiana asserted their independence in a few genera- 
tions after the death of Alexander; Asia Minor and 
other provinces gradually fell away; the great power 
of Parthia arose in the North, and only Syria re- 
mained to Antiochus XIII, the last Seleucid king, 
when the Romans annexed his realm in 64 B.C. Still, 
for a long period the Seleucidae had held up the torch 
of Greek civilization in Asia. The Romans then took 
184 



The Alexandrian Empire 

up the cosmopolitan work of Macedonia, and the West 
gained infinitely by this continuous contact with the 
East. Greek continued to be spoken in those distant 
countries, and became the commercial tongue and 
the common language of educated people in the 
Roman world of that day. The Romans, although 
they despised the Greeks of their own time, took all 
their notions of literature and art from Greece, and 
were prepared to listen to a new religion which came 
to them in a Greek dress. Apart from any other 
gain to the world's spirit the Hellenism of Asia helped 
the spread of Christianity. 

From the first there was an important exception 
to the Seleucid rule in Asia Minor, and that was Per- 
gamum. This place, which Lysimachus had made 
his capital, developed into an independent state, 
of small extent, but a brilliant centre of Hellenic 
culture right down to Roman times. We are all 
familiar with its name from the fact that it has be- 
come corrupted into our 'parchment,' which was 
manufactured there in the days of its greatness. The 
last king of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to 
Rome in 133 b.c. 

The third of the three larger kingdoms which rose 
in the Alexandrian Empire was that of the Ptolemies, 
whose base was in Egypt. Egypt, with which the 
Ptolemies very soon learned to be satisfied, abandon- 
ing extravagant pretensions to the whole Macedonian 
Empire, retained its independence of Rome longer 
than either Macedonia or the kingdom of the Seleu- 
cidas, though it came ultimately to the same end. It 
was founded by Ptolemy (son of Lagus), one of the 
most distinguished of Alexander's generals and his 
i8s 



Alexandef- the Great 

biographer; and, besides firmly establishing a great 
kingdom, Ptolemy commenced its literary glory, 
probably founding the most famous library of the 
world at Alexandria, and making his court there a 
centre of light and learning. The wealth of India 
and Arabia flowed into Alexander's great city, and 
the most brilliant men of the last period of Greek in- 
tellectual influence — the 'Hellenistic age' — ^gathered 
together in the court of the Ptolemies. Rome took 
advantage of the quarrels of the last members of this 
house to interfere in Egypt, and on the death of the 
last sovereign of the line, Cleopatra, in 30 B.C., this 
wealthy and famous realm also became a Roman 
province. 

At the coming of the Romans Greece followed the 
fate of Macedonia and was, despite its political in- 
significance, the most important conquest the Romans 
ever made, both from the point of view of their own 
intellectual development and thatof the many nations 
of whom they were to be the teachers. We have said 
little about its history since Alexander made his 
final descent upon it in 335 B.C. The yoke of 
Macedonia had been an extremely light one, but the 
Greeks were unhappy under it. Sparta alone had 
refused to submit to Alexander, and when he had 
departed to Asia its king, Agis, started to preach a 
crusade against Macedonia, Demosthenes was over- 
joyed and longed to help him, but Athens would take 
no part in the rising; Alexander heard of it and 
laughed at "the battle of mice in Arcadia"; Agis 
was slain and his party was crushed by Antipater, 
whom Alexander had left in charge in Macedonia. 
Demosthenes was a great hero in Athens at this time, 
1 86 



The Alexandrian Empire 

for although the citizens were little more inclined to 
follow his advice than they had been in the old days 
when he warned them against King Philip, they 
recognized that whatever he had predicted had come 
true. Sadly enough he was to end an honourable 
life in a tragic way and leave a stain on his name. 

When Harpalus, Alexander's treasurer, fled from 
Asia at Alexander's return from India, he bore his 
stolen gold to Greece, calculating on being able to 
buy protectors even if no one would help him out 
of ill-will toward Macedonia. When he arrived at 
Athens, with seven hundred talents still remaining 
to him, the party of prudence at first carried the day 
against those who were frankly for taking the money. 
It seemed too risky to have anything to do with this 
object of Alexander's wrath. Covetousness, how- 
ever, prevailed in the end, and the citizens were per- 
suaded to vote that Harpalus should be arrested and 
detained until Alexander returned to Greece, and that 
his money should be placed for safety in the public 
Treasury. The next thing that the people knew was 
that Harpalus had mysteriously disappeared and 
that half the money had gone from the Treasury. 
There was at once a great outcry against Demos- 
thenes, who had had chief control of the matter. 
After making an impressive speech against having 
anything to do with Harpalus, it was said he had been 
led by a heavy bribe to change his mind. He was 
followed about the streets and interrupted in his 
speeches by hooting, jeering crowds, and at last the 
matter was brought before the court of the Areopagus, 
noted throughout Greek history forits just judgments. 
By this great court Demosthenes was declared 
187 



Alexander the Great 

innocent of bribery but responsible for the disappear- 
ance of the money from the Treasury. He was 
sentenced to pay the enormous sum of fifty talents, 
and, being unable to do so, was thrown into prison. 
The severity of this punishment was no doubt partly 
owing to a desire to curry favour with Alexander, 
who might be expected to return to Greece at any 
time. He escaped, probably like Harpalus, by con- 
nivance, and bitterly upbraided the great city which 
had reared him as he stole away: *'0 Athena," he 
cried, "what is it makes you take delight in three 
such noxious beasts as the owl, the snake and the 
people?" 

Then came the news of Alexander's death, which 
seemed to the Greeks too good to be true. There 
had been many false reports which they had believed 
only too readily, and now that the event had actually 
befallen it found them sceptical. Alexander had 
come to seem lifted above mortal chances and changes, 
and they expected at least that his death would be 
preceded by fearful portents. The orator Demades 
said that he could not be dead or the whole world 
would have smelled of his corpse. They waited until 
the report was confirmed in the most definite fashion 
and then they rose in revolt against Macedonia as 
they had done on the death of Philip, thirteen years 
before. Demosthenes once more roamed over Greece 
preaching a new fight for freedom. Athens pardoned 
him, not remitting the sentence of the sacred Areo- 
pagus, but giving him money to pay his fine, and he 
re-entered the city amid scenes of the wildest enthusi- 
asm, every house being emptied of its inhabitants 
to meet him. It was a short-lived happiness. Anti- 
i88 



The Alexandrian Empire 

pater and Craterus marched south from Pella, de- 
feated the Greeks at Crannon in 322 B.C., and were 
approaching Athens when Athens hastened to submit. 
Demosthenes had often raised a jeer when he had 
mentionedMarathonandSalamistohisfellow-citizens, 
and now an outsider might have smiled at the efforts 
of the orator who sought to kindle the old fire in them. 
Without striking a blow they agreed to receive a 
Macedonian garrison into Attica and to put to death 
the orators who had stirred up the revolt. 

Demosthenes and his fellows managed again to 
escape, but this time the officers of Antipater were 
on their track. They separated, therefore, the better 
to elude them, and Demosthenes took refuge in the 
temple of Poseidon, in the island of Calauria. The 
Macedonian captain who had charge of the pursuit 
crossed in a light vessel with some Thracian spear- 
men, and tried to lure Demosthenes from his sacred 
asylum. Antipater, he said, meant him no harm. 
Demosthenes, knowing full well what were the 
Macedonian intentions with regard to him, replied 
by requesting the captain to wait a while and allow 
him time to write a letter to his family. Then he 
withdrew into the temple, took a scroll and a reed 
pen, put the reed into his mouth and chewed it pen- 
sively as was his custom when composing. After a 
while he bowed down his head and covered it. *'Look 
at that coward!" the soldiers exclaimed impatiently, 
and at last the captain approached and again bade 
him fear nothing from Antipater. The orator, how- 
ever, uncovered his head and showed the Mace- 
donians that he was dying, having used the brief 
delay to drink poison from his pen. He strove to 
189 



Alexander the Great 

totter out of the temple, so that he might not pollute 
it by his death, but staggered and fell lifeless before 
the altar. They raised a bronze statue to him in 
Athens, where his end was considered glorious, and 
inscribed on it that if his might had equalled his 
wisdom, Macedonia would never have conquered 
Greece. 

Antipater practically abolished the democratic 
institutions of Athens, and reduced her to slavery 
indeed, but the continued wars of Alexander's 
* Successors' and the invasions of the Celts into 
Macedonia allowed the Greeks gradually to win 
back their independence. The famous Achaean and 
iEtolian Leagues, formed for this purpose, had great 
histories, but these Greek federations came too late, 
and Greece was soon at the feet of a new master. 
Under the Romans Athens won a new importance, 
not political but literary and artistic, and, once merely 
the 'school of Hellas,' became the school of Rome 
and of the world. 



190 



MAP TO SHOW 

EMPIRE OF 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 



Alexander's Empire 




IVIAP TO SHOW 

^^/^ EMPIRE OF 

__,^^ ALEXANDER THE GREAT 

Alexander's Empire 



^^mAllied States 

Alexander^ Route 

'^-\ (A 




SOURCES 

Arrian's Anabasis (English translation and notes by Chinnock, 
1884); Indica and Voyage of Nearchus (translated by Vincent, 
1809). 
The above history is mainly an adaptation of Arrian's account 
of Alexander. He took it chiefly from lost histories written by Alex- 
ander's generals, Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and not only is his version 
now accepted as in the main correct, but modern judgment of Alex- 
ander's character has veered round to the judgment of this experienced 
general and administrator and learned scholar of imperial Rome. 
In reading his works it is sufScient to remember that the speeches that 
he occasionally puts into the mouths of his characters cannot be word 
for word as they made them, and that the material from which he had 
to produce his work was so multitudinous and contradictory that he 
was forced to reject an enormous amount, some of it possibly true. 
The value of his work lies largely in the fact that he alone of all compe- 
tent critics who have dealt with Alexander, read the perished contem- 
porary histories of the conqueror's Ufe. He was a Greek and wrote 
in Greek, in the second century, a.d. 

QuiNTUS CuRTius RuFUs, De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni (English 
translation by Pratt, 1821). 
Curtius wrote in Latin in the middle of the first century a.d. — that 
is, a century before Arrian, but his history cannot be compared with 
that of Arrian. He was so intent on dramatic and literary eflFects 
that he often strayed a long way away from facts. His anecdotal work 
enjoyed a greater popularity formerly than now. It was one of the 
first classical books to be produced (c 1471) by the printing press, and it 
suggested to Racine his play Alexandre. 

Plutarch's Lives of Alexander, Demosthenes, and Eumenes (trans- 
lated by Dry den and others). 
All the fragments remaining of contemporary histories have been 
collected by Carl Mliller in the edition of Arrian of 1877. Various 
facts are preserved in the works of ancient writers like Strabo, Justin, 
and iEUan. 

Herodotus, Histories (English translations by Rawlinson and 
Macaulay). 
The modern authorities chiefly used above have been: 
Burt's History of Greece (1902). 
Hogarth's Philip and Alexander of Macedon (1897); The Army of 

Alexander (in the Journal of Philology, xvii). 
Mahafft's Greek Life and Thought (1887) ; Problems in Greek History 
(1892); Alexander's Empire (Story of the Nations, 1887); Progress 
of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire (1905). 

IQI 



Alexander the Great 

Niese's Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten aeit 

Chaeronea (1893-1903). 
Beloch's Griechische Geschichte (1893-7). 
Kolster's Alexander der Grosse (1890). 
Keller's Alexander der Grosse nach der Schlacht lei Issos zu seiner 

RUckkehr aus Aegypten (1904). 
Janke's Auf Alexanders des Grossen Pfaden (1904). 
Tozer's History of Ancient Geography (1897). 
The Public Orations of Demosthenes (English translation by Pickard- 

Cambridge, 1912). 
Gilbert Murray's translations, with notes and introductions, of the 

plays of Euripides. 
Pater's Plato and Platonism. 

Barker's Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (1906). 
Aristotle's Politics. 

Maspero's Histoire ancienne des peuples de I'orient classique (1899). 
Hall's Ancient History of the Near East (1913). 
Rawlinson's Bactria (1913). 
Rickmers' The Duab of Turkestan (1913). 
M'Crindle's Invasion of India by Alexander the Great as described by 

Arrian (1896), 
V. A. Smith's Early History of India (1904). 
Meyer's Alexandre le grand dans la litter ature frangaise du moyen 

dge (1886). _ 
L'Histoire du bon roi Alexandre (1903), a description by Count Paul 

Durrieu of the superb Flemish manuscript of this name made in 

the fifteenth century for Philip the Good of Burgundy, with 

photographs of some of its miniatures. 
The Alexander Romance (Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 



Many articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica (eleventh edition), 
especially "Alexander," "The Macedonian Empire," "Geo- 
graphy," and "India." 

Wheeler's Alexander the Great (Heroes of the Nations, 1900). 

Dodge's Alexander (Great Captains Series, 1890), 

Histories of Greece by Thirlwall, Grote, etc. 

Freeman, Historical Essays (Second Series). 



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